Birdi Review: Online Pharmacies

Birdi aims to be an all-in-one healthcare solution "for your entire flock". However, at the moment, their services are limited to pharmacy needs: there are no telemedicine visits or other healthcare options to choose from, at least as of the date of this review. The "About Birdi" portion of the website makes it sound like those extra services are on the horizon, though, so keep an eye out.

3 ways to use Birdi

How you access Birdi's online pharmacy depends on whether or not they're the designated mail order pharmacy for your insurance. If so, you'll create a Mail Order account when you click on "Join Birdi". If not, you'll need to select "Create a basic account" to get cash prices on your prescriptions or manage them on others' behalf (like your children or spouse). The third option is to get the Birdi Discount Card and use it at a brick-and-mortar pharmacy near you (which is remarkably similar to another, better-known service on our list).

Pricing is transparent and mostly competitive

That last service is the only one that lets you look up prescription prices without creating a Birdi account, so it's what we used for our comparison pricing. Here's what we found on the 3 commonly-prescribed medications that we used as an apples-to-apples reference in our evaluation:

• Atorvastatin 40 mg, 30 tablets: we were given options at 10 pharmacies in our test area, ranging in price from $6.83 to $54.18. Lipitor was offered at the same 10 pharmacies, ranging from $55`1.76 at a local, non-chain pharmacy and going up to $624.02 at Walgreens.
• Metformin 500 mg, 60 tablets: the small local pharmacy was the least expensive again at $6.45; the other 10 pharmacies' prices ranged from $7.18 to $19.99. The brand-name medication we used at other online pharmacies (Glucophage) wasn't available through BirdiRx's discount program; Riomet was the proposed alternative, in a strength of 500mg/5mL and a quantity of 150 mLs, with prices ranging from $96.28 (CVS) to $326.17 (supermarket pharmacy).
• Levothyroxine 50 mcg, 30 tablets: this was probably Birdi's most competitively-priced prescription of the three at $7.16 (Walgreens), going up to $14.87 at the grocery store pharmacy in our area. Brand-name Synthroid wasn't overly expensive either, ranging from $51.81 (local pharmacy) to $74.31 (CVS).

Mail-order benefits are harder to come by

But, remember that these are all prices at brick-and-mortar pharmacies; until you sign up on your own or with your health insurance that designates Birdi as the mail order partner, you're not getting the full benefits of an online pharmacy.

OTC options aren't clear

We're also not sure how that affects your ability to get OTC remedies when you're ordering your prescriptions online through Birdi. You can look up options at local pharmacies, but we can't confirm that you could tack on some allergy meds or pain relievers with your medication order.

24/7 pharmacist help

On a positive note, we really appreciate that Birdi gives you access to pharmacists around the clock. Whether you've got questions about a new prescription or you think you're experiencing side effects, you can get help with urgent situations within an hour; less urgent issues will get a call-back during business hours the next day, if you're leaving a message after hours.

Feedback is limited - and underwhelming

Unfortunately, Birdi has earned a rock-bottom "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau. The low grade is for failing to respond to 4 complaints, as well as the 16 total complaints filed against it with the BBB. Those numbers aren't staggering, but the issues raised are reflected in customer feedback in other places too. Over on the Google Play store, for instance, more recent reviews say that the Birdi app is buggy and slow. Apple's App Store has comments that sound familiar: "every time, it crashes" and "can't view prescriptions". Beyond the BBB and those two app stores, there's just not any buzz for this online pharmacy.

Getting better but still not an online pharmacy we'd choose

We feel comfortable bringing Birdi up from its previous "couldn't get any worse" rating here. They've become established enough to serve as the chosen mail order pharmacy for some health insurance companies, and there's more feedback than we found in our earlier evaluation. But, that's still not quite enough to be competitive with Birdi's rivals on our list - neither with the online-only pharmacies, nor with the "discount card" options. We'll keep an eye on Birdi and see if any of those "all-in-one" healthcare benefits come around, but for now, we can still only rate this company as below average.

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On the Birdi website