What To Look For When Purchasing Medical Supplies Online
When purchasing your medical supplies online, be it because your insurance doesn’t provide enough supplies for all your needs, flat out doesn’t cover what you need, or you prefer a brand that is more costly or different than insurance will pay, you will encounter many companies offering many of the same items. While price and cost of shipping are a driving force in purchasing, there are often other factors to consider before clicking ‘Buy.’
The internet is a vast field of thousands of vendors of anything you could ever possibly want. How do you know who to trust? It’s important to find a company with some history behind their business. Even if that history is not necessarily all online, a company with history doing business will know their products and their inventory counts. This will help you on both the customer service/question aspect, should you have any, and also will get your order shipped in a timely manner. How often have you tried to contact someone on the other end to have calls not returned or emails not answered? And what about those times your payment has processed to find out later that the products are out of stock or on backorder and you won’t be getting your order after all! It can be very frustrating.
A good internet vendor of medical supplies will have clear contact information, exact return and refund policies, and concise shipping times all listed in obvious places. If they don’t, think twice before purchasing. Sometimes if an offer is too good to be true, it probably is. You don’t want to place an order on a site that looks un-maintained or sloppy because that reflects on the business itself.
Many vendors will also offer seeming deals like free shipping or percent off coupon codes. Often in the excitement of a possible deal, we overlook that it’s not really a deal after all! Just because the site offers free shipping, doesn’t mean their prices are the best. Or on the flip side, a site could have excellent prices but you will have to pay for shipping. Same with coupon codes. One shining aspect in all this muck is that sometimes a company might charge a little bit more or you have to pay the shipping, but their customer service is outstanding and they can offer automatic monthly shipments taking the worry off of you. Just like in the brick and mortar world, there are many factors to consider and only you will know the best option for you.
