Aug. 11, 2021 at 6:00 am | Updated: Aug. 11, 2021 at 6:02 am
Bartell customers face delays, staff shortages after Rite Aid takeover
Paul Roberts
Seattle Times business reporter
For months after Bartell Drugs was bought by Rite Aid last October, many pharmacy customers were pleasantly surprised to see few obvious alterations at the 131-year-old drugstore known for its customer service.
But that seemed to change in June as Rite Aid rolled out new systems and staff training at some of the 67 Bartell locations.
Since then, many customers say, Bartell’s online prescription refill system has malfunctioned. Phone calls to the stores haven’t been answered. Customers entering some stores have found long lines at the pharmacies and, in some cases, just one or two overworked pharmacists remaining after weeks of heavy staff turnover.
“You couldn’t get them on the phone because there was only one person working,” said former Ballard Bartell customer Kathryn Rodrigues Lima, who eventually moved to another drugstore chain — but had to wait 40 minutes on hold with Bartell to get her prescriptions transferred.
“It’s just about the most piss-poor corporate transition you could ever imagine,” added Charles Tomaras, a 23-year Bartell customer in Lake City who abandoned the drugstore chain after repeatedly being unable to get medications for his partner, who is in hospice.
“It certainly has us questioning whether we’re going to stay with Bartell’s,” echoed James Morris, who encountered long delays and a backlog of more than 700 prescriptions at the Renton Bartell in late July.
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Many Bartell customers worry that the problems mean Rite Aid is trying to import its mass-market, cost-cutting, cookie-cutter business model to a Seattle-area company that has been celebrated for generations for its customer service, spotless stores and a quirky product selection featuring lots of locally made goods.
“Things like this tend to indicate that there are other changes coming,” said Morris. “And they’re not going to be for the better.”
Rite Aid and Bartell officials insist that the problems customers are encountering are temporary and related largely to the introduction of new back-office systems at Bartell — and aren’t signs of deeper changes from Bartell’s Pennsylvania-based corporate parent.
The online glitches, for example, reflect efforts to preserve Bartell’s existing online customer experience while upgrading to the digital system used in Rite Aid’s 2,500 stores, said Ken Mahoney, Bartell’s senior vice president of operations, a former Bartell executive who now oversees Bartell and some area Rite Aid stores.
Rather than tear out Bartell’s existing system, Rite Aid “tried to adjust their systems to meet our customer experience — and I think that proved to be a bit more challenging than anticipated,” said Mahoney.
But that more complicated approach is evidence that “Rite Aid is completely committed to keeping Bartell’s Bartell’s,” Mahoney says, adding that it will ultimately result in an online experience that was better than the old one at Bartell.
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Customer complaints about staff shortages may prove harder to solve.
As of Monday, Bartell’s website showed 127 pharmacy job openings, including for 29 pharmacists and 32 pharmacy techs.
Granted, labor shortages have bedeviled retailers everywhere, and have been especially hard on pharmacies: nationally, 80% say they can’t find enough staff, according to a May survey by the National Community Pharmacists Association.
But Bartell appears to be seeing unusually high pharmacy turnover recently — including several cases where most of a location’s pharmacy staff has left, according to many customers and several employees.
An assistant manager at a Seattle store, who asked not to be identified out of fear of being fired, said their pharmacy had recently lost a half a dozen staff, including the pharmacy manager. At another Seattle Bartell, a pharmacy staff of around 10 had been winnowed down to three over the last month, according to one employee.
Jen Koogler heard a similar story when she visited her longtime Bartell in the Uptown neighborhood during the past week. An employee told her most of “the pharmacy staff just quit and people who are left here are all overworked,” Koogler said. “The fact that so many people had quit like that said a lot to me — like, what is happening? Why would they feel the need to quit, en masse, like that?”
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Bartell officials haven’t said exactly how many employees have left recently, and Mahoney said the company generally has experienced “industry-average turnover rates.” But he acknowledged that the new systems and the employee training they require may have prompted some departures.
“People handle and navigate [change] in different ways,” said Mahoney, adding that employees who stick out the conversion period will likely find the new system an improvement over the old one. In the meantime, he said, Rite Aid has brought in pharmacists to help Bartell stores cover some empty shifts and work through backlogs.
Mahoney hopes skeptical customers will also give the new Bartell a chance. Those who do, he said, will continue to see the things they’ve always liked at Bartell, including locally produced products and a heavy emphasis on customer service.
He says the parent company means to run Bartell and the local Rite Aid locations as two distinct operations, with separate marketing. “It’s one company that has two different banners running,” he said, pointing to another company with a similar arrangement: “You know you’ve got QFC and Fred Meyer’s, and they’re both owned by Kroger.”
Mahoney said he wasn’t able yet to say exactly how the two chains would differ. “All I know is, is that it’s not ‘hey, Bartell folks, you’re going to be Rite Aid,'” he said.
For many Bartell customers, however, that’s just talk. The real test, they say, will be whether the new Bartell owners can hire or retain enough staff to maintain the kind of experience that fostered generations of customer loyalty.
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“I want to stick with them,” says Koogler about the Bartell in Uptown. But, she warned, “the whole reason I was going there is because they weren’t Rite Aid.”
Paul Roberts: proberts@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @Pauledroberts.
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