"Excessive supplements delivered instead of samples"

Excessive quantity of nutritional supplements delivered instead of samples

The Dietician Dept at Hairmyres called to review my situation. I have Gastritis, severe reflux & an aperistaltic oesophagus. For these reasons I'm on liquids only. I explained that I'd been experiencing a great deal of vomiting & reflux, even through the night. This puts me at greater risk of yet another bout of Aspiration Pneumonia & further damage to my lungs. It was suggested to me that I try some other supplement such as Calshake. At 600 calories per sachet I wasn't too keen as I'm already grossly overweight. I agreed to try it & was told I'd be getting delivery of one box each of 3 flavours. Instead of one box of each containing 7 sachets, I got 4 large cardboard boxes, each containing 6 boxes of 7 sachets. In other words 168 sachets instead of 21!

I called the department & was told neither the supplier or the Dieticians could take them back since they are classed the same way as prescriptions.  That is nothing short of obscene & a disgraceful waste of money that the NHS can ill afford. It appears to me that the company has a monopoly & cannot/will not accommodate the supply of smaller sample quantities.  I cannot understand why the department cannot use them to give to other others patients as samples.  When I first went onto this form of nutrition, I was give samples from that same department.  I'm sure this isn't an isolated incident.  In fact the same thing happened when I was asked to try Ensure & I couldn't tolerate that either. The questions that need to be asked are pretty obvious.

How often does this happen?

How much is it costing the NHS?

Why can't smaller quantities be ordered?

I refuse to be the person who bins this perfectly good, untouched product so there is going to be an added cost of having them picked up despite me offering to take them to Hairmyres Dietician Dept.