Anyone done business with RX Medco Services in Deerfield Beach, Fla.?
The great thing about having an international weekly blog is the ability to share my successes and my failures with the industry. That includes naming names when someone burns us. There are many, many other operators who have fallen victim to RX Medco Services and posted “rip-off reports” online. The so-called rip-off reports also include complaints by former employees of RX Medco who have graciously posted the owner’s home phone number and address online.
Here is where my story begins and I hope by sharing it with you that I can help save you some grief and aggravation. It was almost 5 p.m. on a recent weekday when we received a call from RX Medco Services asking if we could do a job for them at 7:30 a.m. the next day. The job involved transporting a passenger to a medical appointment five hours away, waiting four hours, and returning home. Who wouldn’t relish a nice 14-hour job? The young lady, Betsy, explained that it was late in the day and their bookkeeper had gone home but they would provide a credit card number and pay for charges upon completion. My young and impressionable reservationist agreed to these terms.
The next day, RX Medco called again to say they had two more jobs for us that both involved long distance transports the following day. This time, we were told by Christina, an employee of RX Medco, that all three trips would be paid at one time by credit cards. Yes, we were dumb enough to believe this and did even a fourth trip for RX Medco.
To date, we have been given one story after another on where the check was and why we have not been paid the sum of $3,500. They actually laughed in our ear once when we called to ask about our money. [Of course, in the interest of fairness, they can respond to and comment about my blog post anytime.] Today, we stumbled across www.ripoffreport.com and found it filled with complaints from all over the nation from independent contract drivers and companies that performed services for RX Medco and never got paid. I am talking about pages and pages of complaints and the same stories they have given us on why they have not paid their bills.
I contacted the insurance carriers of one of the passengers and they said they were no longer sending their work to RX Medco because of repeated problems with them and allegations of non-payment to vendors that performed the service. However, since the insurance company already paid RX Medco for the services performed, they have no interest in paying us because as far as they are concerned, they have paid for transportation.
I found stories on the rip-off website indicating that RX Medco finds people on Craigslist.com who agree to drive for them. Those unlicensed and probably uninsured contractors basically donate their time and gas while RX Medco puts the insurance company money in their pockets. It is an unfortunate system that puts the lives of passengers in jeopardy and causes financial ruin in some cases as these people keep performing services for weeks at a time on the promise a check is coming, and in the end, they get nothing but promises, promises. Stay tuned to see if we get our money, but I'm not banking on it.
--- Jim Luff, LCT contributing editor
Print | posted on Wednesday, June 06, 2012 2:21 PM