Ordering Online from a Canadian Pharmacy is Safe and Easy
online pharmacy safety
Trying to find a reputable online Canadian pharmacy can be challenging — there’s a lot of information leading consumers away from accredited organizations that go to great lengths to ensure quality service for their customers. The problem is that pharmaceutical companies in America don’t want to lose business to competitors who offer the same medications at more affordable prices.
Canadian legislation regulates drug prices more strictly than the U.S. (As we’ve talked about quite a lot in the past.) That means, for most consumers, drugs are going to be much more affordable across the border.
Online Canadian pharmacies have been providing a solution for Americans to find what they need at a much lower cost. No one should have to stress about affording their medications — that’s why millions of Americans are turning to online Canadian pharmacies and reputable international drugstores.
Ensure Your Online Canadian Pharmacy is Safe and Trusted
Online Canadian pharmacies that are approved by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) are safe for Americans to use to fill their prescriptions and purchase over the counter medications. Pharmacies that do not have this approval should almost certainly be avoided. Additionally, individual provinces can have their own associations that oversee the practice of international pharmacy, like the International Pharmacy Association in British Columbia (IPABC). Currently, there are only 71 pharmacies on the CIPA's list and NorthWestPharmacy.com is one of them.
Safety standards must be met by online Canadian pharmacies in order to receive approval from the IPABC and CIPA — and both organizations have a 100% safety record for all of their approved Canadian online pharmacies. The requirements for the IPABC include:
- Patients have a valid prescription
- Demographic and medical information is required to fill a prescription
- A licensed pharmacist must be on staff to supervise dispensing of medications and be available for patient consultation
- All members must have procedures in place to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality
An unsafe online pharmacy may not require a valid prescription or ask for pertinent patient information. It also would not have a pharmacist on staff or procedures in place that protect important patient information. When searching for the right online pharmacy, check to make sure that the business requires the previously mentioned things before dispensing any medications.
In our article, A Beginner's Guide to Online Pharmacy Safety, we discussed how the Norton Shopping Guarantee and Trust Guard are extra measures that are taken by NorthWestPharmacy.com to protect patients. In addition to this third-party security, NorthWestPharmacy.com assures customers that their personal information will never be sold and will be safeguarded against misuse. The Norton Shopping Guarantee also offers reimbursement for identity theft — meaning that when the Norton Shopping Guarantee is present, you can have extra confidence that your information is being protected.
The Trust Guard Trust Seal is another measure of security NorthWestPharmacy.com takes to ensure its customers that it is a legitimate business invested in making its customers happy.
Customer review platforms are another great way to see what customers are saying about a business. With Shopper Approved reviews and Trust Pilot anyone can post comments about their experience with NorthWestPharmacy.com’s service.
So far, over 350,000 customer reviews have been posted and over 80% of customers rated NorthWestPharmacy.com with 5 stars. We are incredibly proud of our history helping Americans gain access to affordable medication — that’s why we post our rating prominently on our website. Legitimate Canadian online pharmacies should display plenty of customer reviews. While you can fake a lot of things, you can’t fake hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers.
Canadian Online Pharmacies Make Ordering Easy
Many Americans assume that to order their medications online, they’re going to have to jump through hoops. The reality is, however, that ordering medications online from a Canadian pharmacy or international drugstore is easy.
Online Canadian pharmacies, like most businesses online, want to make the process as smooth for you as possible while also keeping your information safe.
What You Need to Complete Your Purchase
The majority of Americans shop online every day, but purchasing drugs online is something that is foreign to most of us. NorthWestPharmacy.com makes the process of ordering online simple and convenient.
There are only three things you have to do before we can send you your medication:
- Send us your prescription
- Provide your payment
- Check over and send the order form and customer agreement document which can all be done online
Here's a complete guide on how to do all of the above steps.
Sending Your Prescription
Most patients will fax or mail a prescription to an online Canadian pharmacy or will sometimes ask their physician to do so on their behalf.
All of NorthWestPharmacy.com's information can be found here on the contact page.
Prescriptions are then kept on file and honored for up to one year. You can also order up to three months of a prescription at a time — no more ordering and refilling every month! This is one of the best and most convenient features of ordering from an online Canadian pharmacy. While many local brick and mortar pharmacies will be happy to do the same thing for you, depending on whether your insurance company reduces coverage when ordering more than a one month supply, often it may end up being more expensive than if you would have just ordered a month-to-month supply.
How to Make a Payment
Most international and Canadian pharmacies that supply U.S. patients accept payment only by personal check or an international money order. Unfortunately, they can no longer accept credit cards from U.S. citizens because credit card companies like VISA and Mastercard have been pressured by Big Pharma which has a strong interest in preventing lower cost drugs from reaching patients in the USA. They have done so under the guise of consumer safety and use spurious arguments that suggest all pharmacies that ship to Americans from outside the USA are unsafe.
We understand that this can be frustrating, but unfortunately, there isn’t a lot we can do about it. In A Skeptic's Guide to Online Canadian Pharmacies, we discuss at length how the NABP, or the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, is on a crusade against online Canadian pharmacies by doing everything they can to prevent consumers from having the choice of ordering their medication from an international pharmacy for what appears to be the purpose of protecting their members from competition.
The NABP works closely with big pharmacy chains like CVS, who have to pay a fee for their accreditation. There is also evidence that the NABP works with the pharmaceutical industry and receives compensation for targeting international online pharmacies.
The NABP and companies such as Legitscript work together to shut down “rogue” pharmacy sites. One of the ways they have done this is by going after credit card companies to prevent payments from being processed. The problem is that reputable online pharmacies are also being flagged by credit card companies who have adopted the NABP’s worldview.
On Trust Pilot, NorthWestPharmacy.com addressed this issue:
"This is very frustrating, as we believe VISA's and MasterCard’s policy is having a negative effect on consumers trying to purchase medications from trusted CIPA Member pharmacies with a perfect safety record and long history of serving U.S. residents."
These companies claim that they are enforcing U.S. laws as well as protecting citizens from unsafe, “rogue” pharmacies, but they’re actually preventing millions of Americans from purchasing the drugs they need at more affordable prices from safe and legitimate international pharmacies.
Using personal checks or international money orders is the safest way to purchase medications through an online Canadian pharmacy.
Money orders must be mailed, but personal checks can be mailed, faxed, or emailed. To email your payment, scan it or take a picture of the check with your phone — just make sure to include all of the information on the check. Once payment is received, customers have the option to allow NorthWestPharmacy.com to keep their bank account information on file — that way you don’t need to send a payment for future purchases. Instead, anytime an online order is placed, the funds will automatically be withdrawn from your bank account.
Completing the Order Form and Customer Agreement Document
There are two forms that need to be completed that can be found on the How To Order page. The first is the order form where you fill out your personal information and the second is the Customer Agreement. These can be printed out and mailed along with the prescription and payment or they can be filled out on your computer and then emailed to us.
Processing and Shipping Your Order
Once the prescription, payment, and order forms are received by us, allow up to three business days for processing. Shipping takes anywhere from 8 to 18 business days.
This is one of the reasons we encourage our customers to order their medications early and to order more than just a month of medication — for logistical reasons, we cannot deliver medications at the same speed as your local brick-and-mortar pharmacy.
Once you are in our system, however, we can work with you to ensure that your medication will arrive on time and when you need it.
Ordering from an Online Canadian Pharmacy is Easy
For a variety of reasons, people often think that ordering medication from an online pharmacy is a complex task that only advanced internet users can do. That’s just not the case. We’ve worked hard to make ordering from NorthWestPharmacy.com as easy as possible. It’s our goal to be as accessible as possible so that anyone that needs affordable medication can come to us to find a solution that works for them.
If you have any questions or concerns about ordering prescriptions through our secure website or through our call center, please feel free to get in touch with us. You can call us via a toll-free phone number, email us at your convenience, or even send us a fax. We're open seven days per week — Monday through Friday from 8:00am to 11:00pm Eastern time, and Saturdays and Sundays from 9:00am to 6:00pm Eastern time.
