Legitscript.com |
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Consumer reviews about Legitscript.com |
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LS-Abuse Team
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Jan 12, 2012
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They are not a federal agency, and they do not have any legal right to assume anything
LegitScript strongly stands by our designation of discountmedsnow.com (the Internet pharmacy this complaint appears to be in reference to) as a rogue Internet pharmacy, and our notification to the Registrar of such. LegitScript is endorsed and recognized by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, the non-profit that represents government agencies responsible for licensing and regulating pharmacies and pharmacists, specifically for the purpose of working with Registrars and ISPs. discountmedsnow.com was selling prescription drugs, including addictive medications linked to overdoses, without a valid prescription and without valid pharmacy licenses. In the past, we conducted test buys from this pharmacy network (RxPayouts). The drugs were provided without a valid prescription; without appropriate pharmacy licensure; and moreover, the drugs were mislabeled: when we attempted to contact the pharmacy, they denied sending the drugs; the physician who purportedly wrote the prescription did not exist. In other words, the information was fraudulent. The complainant is the operator of the now-offline website and was an "affiliate" of the criminal network, and was thus profiting from the sale of prescription drugs without a valid prescription and valid pharmacy licenses. We specifically invited the complainant to provide us with valid pharmacy licenses and she was unable to do so. For all of those reason, LegitScript stands by our designation of discountmedsnow.com as a rogue online pharmacy due the sale of addictive prescription drugs without a valid prescription and without required pharmacy licenses.
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bondiboy66
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Jan 22, 2012
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They are not a federal agency, and they do not have any legal right to assume anything
Loofule you should stay away from Enom and GoDaddy or any US domain registrars, best to avoid .com and .net, and use overseas hosting.
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bondiboy66
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Jan 23, 2012
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They are not a federal agency, and they do not have any legal right to assume anything
Oh and i forgot totally stay away from Directi or any of their resellers.
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bondiboy66
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Jan 23, 2012
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They are not a federal agency, and they do not have any legal right to assume anything
Your right loofule they are not a goverment agency and dont have any legal rights outside of the states. i just seen there extremely small print disclaimer . just let your next domain registrar know about this and they will ignore them.
"The information on this website, including information about pharmacy websites, news, data and other information, is based on information from publicly available sources and information obtained by LegitScript, LLC ("LegitScript"). The information available to Internet users without an account performing a search from our homepage is intended solely for the personal use of the website user. LEGITSCRIPT EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THE CONTENT PROVIDED VIA THIS WEBSITE.
LegitScript is not a government agency, law enforcement entity or regulatory authority. LegitScript makes best efforts to ensure that our information about websites is timely and to re-review websites on a periodic basis; however, LegitScript may not be aware of changes made to a website following our review of that website. At the time that LegitScript reviewed the website in question, available information indicated that the website met or did not meet our standards as represented on this website.
LegitScript.com does not provide medical advice nor recommendations regarding the use of any medicine, including prescription drugs. We do not request personal information in any unsolicited email correspondence with our customers. LegitScript shall not be liable for any errors, inaccuracies or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Although LegitScript makes reasonable efforts to verify publicly available information and to obtain reliable content from third parties, LegitScript does not guarantee the accuracy of or endorse the information or opinions given by any third party content provider. LegitScript does not endorse or take responsibility for the content of other sites that LegitScript may link to or provide information about."
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bondiboy66
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Feb 3, 2012
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They are not a federal agency, and they do not have any legal right to assume anything
It is important that you understand the differences among the groups that rate and verify online pharmacies. It’s not only essential to know what credentials each verifies, but the mission and focus of each group. To help, we put together the comparison table below, focusing on topics that should be of interest to the 120, 000, 000 Americans who struggle to afford their prescription drug bill and are searching online for savings (see Drug Prices SOS for more on this national emergency).
Perhaps the biggest difference that you’ll notice among the groups is that PharmacyChecker.com is the only one to include pharmacies from the U.S. as well as from Canada and select other countries. The Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) only accepts Canadian-based pharmacies. The Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) program, run by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP), and LegitScript, a private verification service, exclude affordable Canadian pharmacies and others outside the US and exclusively approve U.S. pharmacies.
It is understandable that CIPA does not include U.S. pharmacies, as it is a trade association for Canadian international pharmacies. While its members provide safe and affordable medication to Americans, CIPA is not an independent third party like PharmacyChecker.com. Recognizing this, almost all of its members are also members of the PharmacyChecker.com Verification Program.
But why do NABP and LegitScript exclude non-U.S. pharmacies? Both claim it is because Americans are not legally permitted to purchase lower cost medication from Canada and elsewhere and it’s not safe. But it’s well known that Americans who personally import medication generally do so without government interference and the evidence shows that buying prescription drugs from sites approved by PharmacyChecker.com is safe. The bottom line is that the constituents of NABP and LegitScript.com don’t want you buying lower cost medication because it’s bad for their businesses. NABP is run by U.S. pharmacists and funded by U.S. pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies. Similarly, LegitScript.com appears to serve the interests of pharmaceutical company clients.
Even if you are shopping for a good pharmacy within the U.S., the NABP VIPPS program currently has less than 20 approved members and only seven will sell you medication without having to be a member of their pharmacy plan. These few companies are almost exclusively large chains that offer no price advantage over your local pharmacy and no price advantage over foreign pharmacies on brand name drugs. Nearly ten times as many U.S. pharmacies are approved by PharmacyChecker.com. While LegitScript.com has 344 approved members, most of these are neighborhood pharmacies with websites; they are not mail-order pharmacies that can fill new prescriptions and help you save money on brand name drugs.
After reviewing the facts, we think that you’ll find that PharmacyChecker.com is not only the most independent and objective group, but its verification process is also the most intensive, involving quarterly re-checks of pharmacy licenses while others perform this every one to three years, or don’t specify the frequency. It is no wonder that among all the groups, the public turns to PharmacyChecker.com’s website for information more than twice as often as all of the other programs combined.
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bondiboy66
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Mar 16, 2012
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They are not a federal agency, and they do not have any legal right to assume anything
LegitScript – Not So Legit?
On March 3, 2010, in Online Pharmacy Verification Services, by Tod Cooperman, MD, President, PharmacyChecker.com, and Gabriel Levitt, Vice President, PharmacyChecker.com
A firm called Legit Script (LegitScript.com) claims to be protecting people by labeling legitimate Canadian and other non-U.S. pharmacies as “Unapproved” or “Rogue.” This serves the big pharmaceutical interests but not the American consumer. More than that, its founder, John Horton, appears to have exploited his former government position to establish LegitScript.com for his own gain.
[UPDATE 9/16/2010: See “Call for Investigation of John Horton, President of LegitScript, for Possible Government Ethics Violations”]
The Set Up:
In 2007, John Horton worked in the Bush White House as Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). As Horton’s LinkedIn page (accessed 3/3/2010) states:
“I served as the primary staff person responsible for advising the “Drug Czar” and coordinating federal policy on several issues, including prescription drug-related issues (including Internet pharmacy policy) and several chemical control issues. I authored the Administration’s National Synthetic Drug Control Strategy and co-authored the President’s National Drug Control Strategy in the years from 2002 until 2007.”
Congress had called for a report from ONDCP to propose a “strategy to stop advertisements that provide information about obtaining over the Internet drugs…without the use of a lawful prescription” (Our emphasis). Moreover, Congress’ request was limited in scope to controlled substances. Horton, as the chief staff person on this assignment, apparently switched the focus of the report from preventing access to controlled medicines without prescriptions (with which PharmacyChecker fully agrees) to denying Americans access to any type of medicine, even with a valid prescription, if coming from a Canadian pharmacy. The absurdity of this switch is that reputable licensed Canadian pharmacies require prescriptions and won’t even sell controlled substances to Americans. We believe this switch was encouraged by big pharmaceutical interests, who make less money when drugs are purchased at lower cost outside the U.S. To achieve their purpose, the report took aim at search engines as well as PharmacyChecker.com. The ONDCP’s paper stated:
“Both Google and Yahoo use a third-party system called PharmacyChecker.com (located at www.PharmacyChecker.com) to verify whether websites seeking to advertise an online pharmacy are legitimate. However, PharmacyChecker has approved several websites from Canada that may be operating lawfully in Canada, but offer prescription drugs to United States consumers…”
The paper noted that “not all VIPPS pharmacies appear to be recognized in the PharmacyChecker system.” [VIPPS is the verification program of the National Boards of Pharmacy in the U.S. and excludes Canadian pharmacies from membership.] The paper goes onto to draw the baseless conclusion that, “For all these reasons, PharmacyChecker is not an adequate, reliable verification system…”
Approving safe, lawful Canadian pharmacies which require prescriptions certainly does not make PharmacyChecker.com “inadequate” or “unreliable.” Quite the contrary. Nevertheless, the paper lays out the plan that we believe Horton hatched, promoted and attempted to execute for the past three years:
“The DEA, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and/or ONDCP will meet with the major Internet advertising services (Google, Yahoo and others) to encourage voluntary action such that only online pharmacies in compliance with Federal and State laws are advertised through the major Internet advertising services. Search engines will be requested to voluntarily adopt standards that comply and encourage consumer compliance with Federal and State laws and regulations, and Boards of Pharmacy standards. This will be done in consultation with the State Boards of Pharmacy through the NABP.”
As we see it, Horton was setting the stage for his company, LegitScript.com, to use this “U.S. only” standard to displace PharmacyChecker.com as the leading certifier of online pharmacies and to pressure the search engines into blocking advertising of lower cost pharmacies in Canada and elsewhere. While Horton was a government employee, on March 20, 2007 his company’s domain name legitscript.com was registered: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/legitscript.com. On April 16, 2007, Horton’s government office submitted the paper quoted above to Congress and, having planted the seed, Horton immediately left office and registered LegitScript as a for-profit company in Virginia and, later, as a not-for-profit entity in his home state of Oregon.
This chronology indicates, at least to us, that Horton manipulated and exploited his position as Deputy Director of a White House office for his personal gain. This raises a question in our view of whether his conduct violated The US Office of Government Ethics’ Misuse of Position policy which states that “Executive branch employees must not use their public office for their own or another’s private gain.”
Misleading Reports:
Horton apparently approached the search engines and others to promote the use of LegitScript and/or VIPPS in place of PharmacyChecker.com (and it’s not surprising that VIPPS now endorses LegitScript as a reputable verification service). Perhaps rebuffed by these companies, Horton issued two reports, each focused on a different search engine, and each claiming that over 80% of pharmacy advertisers found were “illegal” or “rogue” when, in fact, most of these were licensed foreign pharmacies selling real medicine and requiring prescriptions.
From his trumped up research, Horton went on to make the outrageous accusation that search engines were “sponsors” of rogue Internet pharmacies tied to “foreign (mainly Russian, Eastern Europe, and Chinese) organized criminal networks that are thought to fund other illicit activities including, in some cases, terrorism.” There is little doubt that LegitScript.com’s intention was to embarrass the search engines and cast doubt on the PharmacyChecker.com Verification Program.
Horton’s Real Business:
Despite LegitScript’s efforts, traffic to its site has been scant — less than 900 unique visitors per month in January 2010, compared to 104, 000 per month to PharmacyChecker.com (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/legitscript.com/). However, as we see it, Horton’s purpose was not to help consumers find safe and affordable pharmacies, but to help deny Americans, especially the uninsured, access to lower priced medications. He has revealed his purpose in several ways: He dissolved LegitScript as a non-profit organization in Oregon on April 8th, 2009 and then registered LegitScript as a for-profit LLC on August 17th, 2009. At the same time, records at the Oregon Secretary of State Corporation Division show that Horton registered a firm called Evergreen Government Relations, giving the same address as LegitScript, apparently expecting to cash in on his government connections and influence on the behalf of corporate clients.* A week earlier, on August 10th 2009, he abandoned his registration at the U.S. Trademark Office to use “LegitScript Certified” as a certification mark for Internet pharmacies. Working for companies to get government agencies to pressure search engines and domain registers is where the action is for John Horton.
Making Money:
LegitScript.com adamantly denies that it is a “front for big PhRMA” and claims that it is funded by its employees. But unlike pharmacy verification groups like VIPPS and PharmacyChecker.com, it does not charge pharmacies a fee for its verification service. So where does its revenue come from, or where does Horton get the money to fund it? The website says it offers “market research reports” regarding the Internet pharmacy and online pharmaceuticals markets. And who might be the customers of such “research”? We think it’s fair to assume that its big pharma, including big US pharmacies. LegitScript.com may not expect to make money from its verification program, and it doesn’t care because its money may come from elsewhere.
Be On the Look Out:
If LegitScript.com releases other “research reports, ” keep in mind John Horton’s real agenda. And if search engines exclude safe, low cost pharmacies from advertising (and one recently did) or, worse yet, block them from appearing at all, we believe that LegitScript.com and John Horton, serving his masters, may have had a hand in it.
We at PharmacyChecker.com think that shutting down “rogue pharmacies” that sell narcotics, or any drug, without a prescription is right. LegitScript’s efforts in that direction are commendable. But shutting down access by Americans to safe and affordable prescription medication is bad policy, unethical and unfair; and using government position and influence to get this done seems a misuse of power. These appear, however, to be the tactics of LegitScript.
Legit? We think not.
http://pharmacycheckerblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Request-for-Investigation-of-John-Horton-for-Possible-Legal-and-Ethics-Violations-While-Associate-Deputy-Director-of-the-White-House-Office-of-National-Drug-Control-UPLOAD.pdf
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