Lotus Weight Loss and faulty Mounjaro pen: has anyone had support?

[Polkadotdash]

Currently dealing with Lotus Weight loss and a malfunctioning mounjaro pen.
Is there actually a human that works there? They don’t answer the phone, they send AI generated messages, the chat boards also look like they are run by AI.
This is my first order from them and it’s been a nightmare. They are the 9th different supplier I’ve used (regularly hop to get better price). 18 pens in and this is the first problem I’ve had with one jamming, under and over dispensing.
Ive told them all of this and the only answer I get from them is speak to Eli Lilly. I’ve also done that. They take up to a month to investigate. I’ve asked lotus if I can have a replacement pen. Answer was no. But I was welcome to order and pay for another one.
I asked should I stop using the pen. They replied that they couldn’t give me a view.
I asked to speak to them. They refused, had to be via message.
I see glowing reviews online for them. Are they AI too?
I think the problem with the pen is either to do with the bung at the needle end or to do with the spring mechanism in the handle. Was I really naive in thinking that if a patient reported a problem like this the dispensing pharmacy would act? And not simply say ‘if you don’t like it, buy another one or speak to the manufacturer?’

That is very poor of them. A negative Trust Pilot review might spur some action? They do seem to respond on TP to 1 star reviews after a few days. They also have a phone number on their website 02921 151055 which they say is available Mon-Fr 12-3pm

If the pen is broken or malfunctioning I think Lilly might ask for you to send it to them for analysis. Otherwise I would be tempted to get insulin syringes and just extract the doses from the pen rather than waste the medication.

That’s the telephone number they never answer. Tried every day for a week. Eli Lilly have yet to respond to ask for any evidence. Just to log the issue. I’m told it could take between 30-60 days.
I’m not planning to do the self extraction and inject thingy. I feel that I should just be able to get a working pen that I’ve paid £250 for.
It worries me that this is worse customer service than if I’d bought a faulty pair of shoes.

How did you pay for it? Can you try a charge back from your bank? Sometimes it gets companies attention 🤷‍♂️

I've had a faulty pen before where the mechanism just jammed - although not from your provider.

Honestly, I just withdrew the required future amounts with insulin needles. I know you say you don't want to do this but it will resolve the issue.

I do agree though that the customer support you are receiving is awful and I would leave a review stating your issues.

It's very easy to break a pen through forcing it to dispense when the needle has bent when attaching. It could create the damage/ issue you seem to have, so I don't fault them for wanting to investigate. It's whether or not the length of time is appropriate.

Did it prime and turn without issue on the first dose? You mentioned under and over dispensing, so it's not clear if faulty from the start.

How many doses are left in it?

I’ve tried my bank. I had to wait 15 days from the date of the sale. Then I have to wait another 15 days after asking them for a return address and attempting to send the product back to them. Then they will attempt to recover the costs. Would just be easier if an online pharmacy dispensing restricted prescription only medication would talk to me.

It jammed on the first dose. Probably about 10 clicks in. After not getting a response after 5 days I wound it back out to 1 again, fitted new needle and tried again. This time it got halfway through and flicked out of my skin and continued to dispense even though I wasn’t pressing it. Now it won’t stay at zero, it pops back up a click. There is definitely something wrong with the pressure in it. I’ve no idea how many doses worth I’ve managed in reality and how much has been wasted.

@Kipperandarthur if you bought some £250 shoes and the heel snapped and the retailer refused to answer your call, would you be happy just glueing the heel back on? Or if you bought some paracetamol and the packet was damaged, would you just use the ones you could?

From the description, it could easily have been that the first needle was bent and then by proceeding to inject, the mechanism was damaged. It primed correctly on both attempts?

@Polkadotdash the service is terrible. I just mentioned using syringes to extract the medication so that it isn’t wasted, rather than as a resolution to the issue.

I had a delivery of tablets (not weightloss related) from Pharmacy2U worth £15 and on delivery the parcel had been crushed and clearly had foot prints all over it. Half the tablets were crushed and the rest were popped open. It took one online chat, with a human, who requested I send a photo and then they immediately sent out a replacement. They would also have refunded me. That’s the sort of service level you’d expect from an online pharmacy, not AI only and no phone line response.

I would email them with “Formal Complaint” in the subject line and outline all the issues. I would point out that you will consider contacting the GPhC to feedback to them about the poor pharmacy service. See if that gets a response.

Yep, primed correctly.
But really, this is a conversation for Lotus to have with me. Have you used them before?

Lotus are awful. They didn’t send me any needles. They never answer the phone, emails or app messages. Would not use again.

I've not used them but had only heard good things. The tone of your response reads as pretty snippy; as if you are only interested in views that align with you. If this is the wrong impression, I'll continue...

I am trying to help by giving my opinion/ answer to your questions in the OP. "Was I really naive in thinking that if a patient reported a problem like this the dispensing pharmacy would act? And not simply say ‘if you don’t like it, buy another one or speak to the manufacturer?"

I have no idea if it was user error, just that it usually is, so is worthy of appropriate investigation to sort the wheat from the chaff for such an expensive product with apparently low profit margins for the pharmacy. Your bank seems to agree that 30 days isn't unreasonable.

You don't like the wait, which is also understandable. Hopefully you'll be vindicated soon and receive your refund/ replacement.

How long have you been without the medication? If you have the funds available for next month's supply, is it worth pre-ordering it now to use while the investigation continues? You'll be whole next month (via refund/ replacement) when they find in your favour that it was faulty.

I'd expect successful priming is something you've already discussed with Lotus/Lilly. (It would have likely been my first point raised if describing this type of fault with a pen, so it was a notable omission from your description of using the pen.)

Have Lotus said what the next step is; are they waiting for the outcome of the investigation? Your contract is with them, so they can't leave it entirely up to Lilly and leave you hanging indefinitely.

I think the point is, @Twasasurprise, that Lotus haven’t said anything other than they don’t care, based on an AI bot interaction as per the OP. They don’t answer their phone line and they have told the OP to only communicate via the AI bot chat. That chat bot has said no to a refund/replacement.

Pharmacies usually do try to blame user error when a pen jams and I’ve seen pharmacies mentioned on threads here that don’t refund or replace as a result of blaming user error. So Lotus aren’t alone in that, but their customer “service” sounds shockingly poor.

I was missing needles on my last delivery, used their contact form and got a fee as Italy quick response asking me to confirm I had thoroughly checked inside the packaging,. I confirmed and got a fairly quick response to day needles have been desostched with Royal Mail tracking number. All in all not bad service, and should get the delivery over the weekend.

I see your point, but the info we have is just from one side. I think I asked some questions where OP is missing important detail. I like to consider a balanced view rather than blindly accepting an OP that lacks full context as they are understandably biased.

I'd be upset and angry too if I had received a faulty pen, it's just that the odds are that the pen wasn't faulty and I can't blame a pharmacy for wanting to establish the facts. If it was faulty, OP deserves a replacement or refund, but it might take a "reasonable" amount of time to establish this.

I'd read that there were responses from Lotus, just not an agreement to refund/ replace, or (very sensibly) a refusal to agree for OP to continue using a damaged/ faulty pen. Also a request to keep correspondence in writing. We are not privy to the communication up to this point so I couldn't comment on why this was requested.

Is it established that there is no way past the AI, or is it resisting due to the information provided? I guess if you chase the cheapest prices, you get the speed of customer service (AI) that comes with it. Not suggesting no CS, it's just unrealistic to expect 5 service if paying 3 prices. They don't seem to be doing anything dangerous, just being slow.

Absolutely no arguing or disrespect @SilenceInside , you host a thread I've been following for a long time and you always go to bat for fellow MNers.

(I've ordered 38 😵 pens, approx 25 used so far and luckily had no issues or need to contact any Customer Service about pen issues.)

I would think that ringing them for a week and not getting through is a fair sign that the OP can’t get past the AI, at least via their customer phone line, if we are to take what the OP says at face value of course. I think I would be quite cross at that lack of response from a healthcare company that was responsible for prescribing to me.

Lotus aren’t particularly cheap, they seem to offer a decent first order discount but after that the prices are pretty mid range. I think you should expect better service than AI chat bots for an online pharmacy that’s actually prescribing to you, regardless of whether they are cheap or expensive.

You’re ahead of me on total number of pens. I think I must have ordered around 24 pens in total and used 22 of them. I’ve never had any issues with any of them either but past performance is no indicator of future results.

@SilenceInside thank you. That’s the point of my question. It’s asking about dealing with Lotus in particular and then if their customer service isn’t up to standard, what should they be doing. I had already considered making a complaint to the General Pharmaceutical Council.
I am surprised that a dispensary can just refuse to engage with you. I’ve had emails back from them saying ‘we appreciate it’s frustrating but you need to speak to Eli Lilly directly’. I don’t think that’s good practice. They read like AI because they quote all my own words back to me in the response.
I asked them outright what their medical advice was on continuing to use the pen and they/the AI bot wouldn’t give a view. I can’t envisage a real world scenario where I was dispensed a prescription by a chemist and then I returned with it to say ‘this is faulty, it’s dosing too low or too high’ and they’d say ‘I cannot provide you advice on this. Please contact the manufacturer. Or buy another one from me’.
And @Twasasurprise I’m not asking for people to agree or disagree with me that my pen is faulty. Or asking how did it happen. Or how I should fix it. I’m trying to find out views on Lotus. Also I do not have the spare funds to buy extra pens to keep a contingency supply. If I have to wait for Eli Lilly to look at this, I will have a gap of possibly 4/8 weeks dosing. I’m currently on 12.5mg. So I would be back down to 2.5mg. It would essentially be the end of my time on Mounjaro. All because an online pharmacy won’t talk to me.

Sorry - just seen the typos on my post….

however, I used Lotus’s contact us form for my query and got a fairly quick response, and then further responsive follow up so I’d suggest that is a good way to get a response from an actual person.

if The pen needs Lilly to establish faulty or not then presumably, somehow it needs to be sent to them? As the Ops contract is with Lotus I’d say they need to return the pen to Lotus and ask for them to deal with it….

@putthehamsterbackinitscage Lotus is responding by email but they are AI style responses saying ‘please tell us when Eli Lilly have contacted you’. I would return the pen to them but if I do that, I have no pen, no refund, no contact. I can’t even claim on my bank because I have returned the item.
I have contacted Eli Lilly and they said they will be in touch. Bearing in mind they didn’t ask for pictures/video or anything. I had to push that to them. It could be weeks before I get a response.
Im quite happy to return the pen. I just don’t want to be left without any medication.
Every option ends up with me out of pocket, out of medication.
That does not feel like a fair customer outcome to me.

This is why I would extract the medication with syringes and use it that way rather than waste it. Essentially give up on Lotus or Lilly responding in time to be helpful, and make sure that you don’t miss out on the expensive medication.

There are pharmacies, the maintenance friendly ones, who would allow reordering with a longer gap than usual and not make you drop back to 2.5mg.

@SilenceInside yeah I do get that but it’s not something I’m comfortable with doing. Plus I don’t see why I should be out in that position when there is an easy answer - Lotus could pick up the phone, ask me to return the pen and send out a new one to me. But they obviously don’t want to do that because profit is more important. More important than patient safety.

Yes, face value I have questions for when the info provided is so one-sided. I could say I've called someone for a week, when it is 2 or 3 calls over the period of a week. What does for a week actually mean?

Lotus apparently asked for no phone calls about this issue, but again, we don't know what preceded this. No screenshots were provided. OP doesn't have to answer to us, but asking for opinions while providing no reference can surely allow that their statements be viewed with a request for clarification or a little scepticism due to bias.

I'd just prefer to see actual or even approximate figures, even without proof. OP could have called 2 or 30 times, but we just don't know. They didn't clarify and I don't like maligning anyone, a company or individual on vague, scant information when the information provided could equally be construed as a perfectly reasonable response.

Lotus seem to be responding, just not how OP expects/ wants them to.

I believe OP @Polkadotdash asked for views on Lotus' response, and I gave my view. I asked for more information in order to form my view. Based upon further info given by OP only, my view is that neither side is unreasonable and an invesstigation is not inappropriate. OP's bank also seems to concur that 30 days investigation is not inappropriate.

Again, if OP received a faulty pen, I truly hope the investigation is quickly found in their favour.

(While clearly not required nor OP's preferred option, extraction by insulin syringe would have been the preferred option by most of us seasoned MJers. It would have eliminated a lot of the angst, eliminated the wait between doses and resolved the issue very quickly with little expense. In fact a huge saving, as OP could have taken advantage of the extra medication in the pens!)

@Twasasurprise whaaaaaaaaaaaattttt??? 😆😆😆😆😆.

@Polkadotdash I’ve always done it to get the remaining medication after the 4 normal doses, so I’m very used to doing it by now. It also keeps the cost down. I appreciate that not everyone is comfortable doing it though.