23/08/2025
At Comber Pharmacy we always believed we were pretty conventional.
A local pharmacy, on the high street, where you could speak to your pharmacist face to face or make a quick telephone call to ask a question about your medication. We have a local telephone number, one that’s included in most people’s call bundles, not a 0845/0844/0345+ etc number where the caller pays to speak to us. We do a little bit of local advertising and sponsor a few Facebook posts to tell local customers about our services.
However with the arrival and popularity of the weight management medications (GLP1 drugs such as Mounjaro and Wegovy and others) over the past few years we’ve realised we may not be as conventional as we thought:
-We don’t offer promotion codes flash discounts or super low introductory pricing. We don’t use dynamic pricing when demand is high. We don’t employ influencers or paid social media affiliates. We have always maintained a price we believed was a fair reflection of the time needed to spend with our patients and provide a face to face consultation with a pharmacist for all patients.
-We don’t flood the Internet search engines and clog up your social media feed with ads for these super low introductory prices.
-We certainly don’t aggressively advertise so our medication prices become a subject of international attention and discussion. It is no secret that UK drug prices have historically been lower than many other Western countries, not because we are “freeloaders” but because the NHS is the single biggest healthcare provider in the world. The NHS is almost unique in that it is one huge customer serving almost the entire population. It is basic business: the bigger the customer, the better the price they can negotiate. However, as a matter of basic good manners if you benefit by being a big customer and are able to buy products cheaper than everyone else you don’t shout so loudly about it so as to annoy all your neighbours who aren’t able to buy so competitively. You don’t broadcast the special discounts you are getting to the entire world. If you do this you can end up losing your discounts and your prices will sharply increase to be the same as everyone else.
-We don’t think of healthcare in terms of words like “express” or “simple” because healthcare and more specifically weight loss should not be “express” and for those who have tried to achieve it, it definitely isn’t “simple”. Even using the new tools like the GLP1 medications we know that weight loss and weight maintenance can be a daily struggle for our patients and that is why they always get to check in with a pharmacist at each appointment, are able to discuss their issues or concerns or seek reassurance regarding side effects. That’s what your pharmacist is trained for- it’s why we do what we do.
-We don’t operate from an anonymous industrial unit on the outskirts of town where although the rents and property rates are lower our customers can’t find us and have to contact us through a chat service or via a premium rate telephone number.
We also know many patients are concerned about the recent increases in the cost of certain weight management treatments. These changes aren’t the result of local pharmacies suddenly altering how they operate, but of wider international pricing pressures.
Healthcare and more specifically pharmacy should be of high quality. It should be accessible. If it is privately funded it should be fairly and consistently priced, no gimmicks no tricks and no hidden pricing. Healthcare and more specifically weight management takes time, it is not a race and it is often not simple. Above all, healthcare should be personal.
Lots of products are well suited to the Internet. You can book a holiday online, order a taxi, buy the latest smartphone, even order a pizza. Surely healthcare is a little different. We believe healthcare is best conducted face to face with a well trained professional.
Whilst at Comber Pharmacy we cannot influence global pricing decisions what we can control is how we help our patients. We will continue to offer the newest, most innovative treatments and do our best to treat our customers fairly.
Whether that is conventional or unconventional, we will leave our customers to decide.
