Despite a plea from longtime customers of Target’s pharmacies, CVS isn’t bringing back the retailer’s iconic red prescription bottles.
Target’s pill bottles used to come with color-coded rings around the neck, and featured labeling on the top of the bottle and easy-to-read prescription information, the Associated Press reports. But CVS began doing away with the red bottles when it opened its first pharmacies within Target stores in February, a result of Target selling its 1,672 pharmacies to the drugstore chain for $1.9 billion in a deal that closed last December.
Instead, CVS switched the red bottles for the white-capped, orange-colored vials that are standard at most pharmacies.
“This is really inconvenient and irritating,” Vivian Ruth Sawyer, a Target-turned-CVS (CVS) customer told the AP.
Sawyer even fished through the trash to find her old Target bottles after receiving the white-capped bottle. Even though they don’t have the correct expiration dates, she said she prefers them because they make it easier to tell her prescriptions apart.
And Sawyer is not alone in her dissatisfaction. Some customers are so angered by the change that they’ve taken to Twitter (TWTR) with the hashtag #redbottlesrock to vent.
#redbottlesrock@CVS_Extra Please bring back bottles that make life easier for patients.
— Mary Beth (@19days2live) September 28, 2016
https://twitter.com/david801/status/781179916880445440
Hey @Target and @CVS_Extra, #redbottlesrock… They made all the difference managing my mess. Why fix something that was revolutionary? 👎
— Jerusha Tano-Fett (@jerushatanofett) September 28, 2016
A CVS spokesperson told the AP that the company stopped using Target’s (TGT) pill bottles because it’s both easier and more cost-efficient to use the same bottles at all of its 9,600 locations across the U.S.
But after customer visits to Target’s in-store pharmacies dropped in the second quarter, there was question if the sales decline had to do with a change in prescription bottles, according to the AP. CVS said the two were not related.
But Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with market researcher NPD Group, isn’t so sure. He said the change up may have led some customers to fill their prescriptions elsewhere, which contributed to the second-quarter drop.
“When you start tinkering with things … the consumer kind of gets a little testy,” he told the AP.