It is no secret that prices at small local pharmacies can be surprisingly high. Indeed, such a pharmacy has high running costs relative to the sales volume: it has to rent the space and pay the employees, plus it cannot economize on scale and only buys small amounts of each drug. If you live in a small town, than you may not even have a choice but to shop at the expensive local pharmacy – or buy your meds online.

Indeed, large online pharmacies, such as My Canadian Pharmacy, have the necessary market weight to negotiate with suppliers for better prices. Most of them have dedicated purchasing teams of several people who battle for lower prices all day!  Customers can obtain particularly attractive rates when ordering larger packs of pills.

This has surely happened to you at some point: you come to your local pharmacy with a prescription, but they don’t have the drug you need – instead, they offer you a more expensive substitute. Indeed, there can be as many as ten substitutes for any drug, many of them high-quality and very affordable generics, but a standard pharmacy simply cannot stock them all – it will usually have the pricier ones that bring more profit. By contrast, a large online Canadian pharmacy can easily offer many drugs with the same active ingredient thanks to its large network of suppliers and big warehouse capacity. Moreover, often an online pharmacy will specialize in particular types of meds (antibiotics, anti-asthma, sexual health, etc.), so it will provide the largest possible choice in its area of specialization.

Traditional local pharmacies often have long queues and few salespersons working at any one time, so that it’s not uncommon to wait for twenty minutes or more to be served. Another inconvenience is that you cannot actually see the drugs – the pharmacist has to go and get them out of storage, and you don’t have the time to study the leaflet or compare the prices. Shopping at an online pharmacy solves the issue: you can spend as much time as you like reading about different meds and perform a real price analysis. What’s more, you can do it late at night or on Sunday, on your comfortable couch, with a cup of coffee. While a visit to a local pharmacy may seem like an annoying chore, shopping for medications online is actually a pleasant experience.

In your local pharmacy, where there may be just one salesperson for ten or more customers, a pharmacist may not be able to give you proper recommendations and explanations – for the lack of time, but also for the lack of knowledge. Very often pharmacy employees are knowledgeable, but they probably won’t be able or willing to answer your questions for half an hour. By contrast, every large online pharmacy has a large customer support team, ready to consult customers 24/7. Once you initiate a chat with a support specialist, he or she will stay with you for as long as needed, giving you all the necessary information about alternative drugs, doses, side effects, and so on.

In local, offline pharmacies it rarely happens to find a sale or a discount. Online pharmacies, on the other hand, benefit greatly from the economy of scale and can often offer really significant discounts – up to 30% in some cases. A good pharmacy will have a several-tiered system of discounts, including regularly rotating sales, special offers for major holidays, bonus pills including with every order, and – perhaps most importantly – exclusive member discounts for registered users.

An important feature of a reliable pharmacy is that it will offer discounts not only on cheaper meds, but also on the more expensive ones, giving customers a chance to try drugs that they would normally not be able to afford.

The matter of safety naturally interests all customers of online pharmacies, and indeed, far from all such websites are trustworthy. Indeed, the proliferaton of fraudulent pharmacies is a real issue, so the queston of choosing an honest pharmacy becomes a priority. Good, reliable pharmacies offer all the same security as a  traditional pharmacy does. All major cards should be accepted, and your payment details must be properly encrypted and stored without any risk of being transferred to third parties. You should receive a confirmation upon the successful completion of the payment and then once your purchase is shipped. Deliveries are normally done by a reliable courrier, and while it will not occur on the same day (perhaps the only disadvantage compared to a visit to a local pharmacy), it usually takes just a couple of days. Finally, you can be sure that the package will be discreet and will not feature the contents on the label.

Any good online Canadian Pharmacy will feature dozen of articles dedicated to various health issues, explaining their causes, symptoms, and treatment methods. For each drug, there will be a detailed product page, containing a wealth of information on the mechanism of action, side effects, dosages, correct method of use, and so on. When you shop at an online pharmacy, you have a change to expand your horizon, learn something new about how human body works. Unfortunately, most people are quite ignorant about medicine and physiology, which often makes them easy prey for various crooks. Online pharmacies also perform an educational function, making you more aware of the possible health problems.