ElderWeb

Irving Levin and Associates conducted a survey of online pharmaceutical sites. The survey compares publicly traded companies PlanetRx.com, HealthCentral.com, and drugstore.com with real world stores CVS.com and Walgreens, and privately owned more.com (which will soon be purchased by HealthCentral.com.) They purchased at a standardized list of pharmacy items from the online sites, then compared them with the same items at the local CVS store.

They found numerous problems with the online services. Using the search engines to find specific items required the shopper to try typing in several variations of a brand or item name since results were either too few or too numerous. Web site errors at Drugemporium.com (owned by HealthCentral.com) and Walgreens.com forced the user to stop shopping and try again later before an order could be processed. Calling the toll-free help lines resulted in long waiting time, followed by scant insight into a reason for the error and no solution to the problem. A discrepancy was found between the online invoice and the delivery invoice from Drugemporium.com. Most of the online pharmacies offered house brand savings (Drugemporium.com also offered several coupons), and all charged $3.50 - $4.45 for delivery in up to 5 business days. Comparatively, at the local bricks-and-mortar drugstore, consumers can purchase and walk out with the same name-brand items for only about 5% to 10% more in cost.

Their conclusion -- online drug sales sites still have lots of work to do.