Returns and refunds

The short version: a dispensed medicine cannot come back, but anything that is our mistake is put right in full, and you do not have to argue for it. The long version explains which is which, because the line between them is where every dispute over a pharmacy order happens.

Why a medicine cannot be returned for a change of mind

Once a sealed medicinal product has left the pharmacy’s control, nobody can verify how it was stored, handled or transported. A pack that comes back looks identical to one that never left, and that is exactly the problem: it cannot be dispensed to anyone else, so it is destroyed. For that reason sealed medicinal products are among the goods excluded from the consumer right of withdrawal once unsealed, under article 16(e) of Directive 2011/83/EU and article 59 of the Italian Consumer Code.

This is not a restocking policy dressed up as hygiene. It is the same rule that means a parcel returned to us by a carrier is destroyed rather than resold, and it is one of the differences between a pharmacy and a shop.

Before dispatch: cancel freely

Up to the moment a parcel is handed to the carrier you can cancel for any reason, or for none, by email. Nothing has been charged at that point — payment is only arranged once the prescription check has cleared — so there is nothing to refund and no fee. If payment has already been made and the order has not yet moved, it is returned in full, by the route it arrived, within five working days.

After dispatch: what is refunded in full

These are ours to fix, at our cost, including return carriage where a return is needed at all:

• The wrong product, strength, pack size or quantity. Measured against your written confirmation, not against what you meant to order. If the confirmation says what you asked for and the parcel does not, it is wrong and it is replaced.
• Damaged or unsealed on arrival. A crushed carton, a broken blister, a missing seal, a leaking tube.
• Short-dated or expired. Anything that arrives already expired, or with so little shelf life left that the course you were prescribed cannot be finished within it.
• A pack that does not match its own labelling — a different name or strength on the carton than on the blister, printing that does not match the manufacturer photographs on the product page, a missing lot number. Treated as a suspected falsified medicine, refunded, and reported to the regulator.
• Never delivered. Replaced or refunded once the carrier’s search period has run; the timings are on shipping and delivery.

Do not take a dose from a pack in any of these states. A refund is worth less than a reaction to a medicine nobody can now identify.

What we need, and by when

Write to [email protected] with the order reference in the subject line, within 14 days of delivery, and attach:

• a photograph of the outer packaging as it arrived, before unpacking if that is still possible;
• a photograph of the pack showing the product name, strength and the lot number and expiry printed on it;
• one line on what is wrong.

Keep the pack and the outer packaging until the claim is closed. Three photographs settle almost every case without a return being needed at all; where we do ask for the pack back, a prepaid label is sent and nothing is deducted. A claim is answered within two working days and resolved — replacement dispatched or refund issued — within five working days of being accepted. Refunds go back by the route the payment came.

The 14-day window exists because a claim about a parcel’s condition on arrival becomes impossible to assess once weeks have passed. If something is discovered later — a fault that only shows up part-way through a course, for instance — write anyway: the window governs condition-on-arrival claims, not fairness.

What is not refunded

• A correctly supplied medicine you decided not to take, or no longer need.
• A medicine that did not work for you. Response varies between people, and the product pages say so rather than promising an outcome; a tablet that does nothing for one man at 50 mg is a clinical matter for the prescriber, not a defective product.
• A side effect from a medicine correctly supplied and used as the label directs. Report it — to us, and to the pharmacovigilance system described on medicine safety — and if the page you ordered from understated the risk, the page gets corrected. The pack is still not refundable.
• Import duties, customs charges and local taxes. We never receive them, so we cannot return them.
• A parcel seized or destroyed by a customs authority because the medicine may not lawfully be imported to that address. Checking that rule is the buyer’s obligation under the terms of sale.
• A parcel returned to us because delivery was refused or went uncollected: refunded less the outward and return carriage, since the contents cannot be dispensed again.
• An order sent to an address supplied incorrectly, once it has been dispatched.

If you disagree with the outcome

Say so in writing, to the same address, and the decision is looked at again by the practice rather than by whoever answered first. Beyond that the routes do not depend on us: a consumer resident in the EU can take a cross-border dispute to the European Consumer Centre network, and a consumer anywhere may sue in the courts of their own place of residence, as the terms of sale record. A complaint about professional conduct goes to the Ordine degli Psicologi della Toscana; a complaint about personal data goes to the Garante. Both addresses are on who we are.

One note on tone, since this is a page people reach when they are annoyed: we would rather replace a pack than win an argument about whose photograph shows what. If the evidence is ambiguous and the sum is small, the benefit of the doubt goes to the person who paid.