Mountain Gal,
Whenever you need to find out more about a web site, remember that you
can check the domain record at Network Solutions (or the appropriate
registrar).
Go to http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index.jhtml and type
in the domain name you are looking for.
The result for medcentercanada.com gives the following information, in part:
Domain MEDCENTERCANADA.COM
Date Registered: 2002-11-21
...
Glassey Consulting
Alex Glassey
44 Armour Crescent Winnipeg MB R3J 3P6 CA
2048968878 2048318593
The last two numbers are probably telephone numbers.
This listing tells us that the domain has been registered since
Noveber of 2002, so they have at least been around that long. You also
have a physical address for one of the principals of the company. This
can be reassuring.
Searching Google for "Alex Glassey" yields further information:
It looks like he runs other web sites which appear to be in the same business:
http://www.medstoreusa.com/e_index.html
http://www.medcenterstore.com
And some personal background:
http://www.glasseyconsulting.com/whoweare2.htm
Including a picture of Mr. Glassey. The google search, at first
glance, does not turn up any worrisome information about Mr. Glassey
or his company. The fact that the medcentercanada.com web site appears
to be down may not bode well for the health of the company, but keep
in mind that web sites can be down for all sorts of technical reasons
that have nothing to do with corporate health.
If you can't get to the web site, and you would like to confirm that
the information we have found so far is correct, there is always the
google cache at:
://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:4cwdLxwP8HIJ:www.medcentercanada.com/contact/++site:www.medcentercanada.com+%22contact%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
This also gives us a handy 1-800 number that you can call to find out
why the web site is down.
To get to the Google cache, remember to click on the word, "Cached" in
the Google listing.
In case the web site has gone from the Google cache (perhaps it has
been down too long) you can try the Wayback Machine. Here is what
medcentercanada.com looked like in February of 2003:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030214133617/http://www.medcentercanada.com/
Interestingly, the Wayback Machine has no entries available prior to
this date. The index is not necessarily complete, however, this may
indicate that the site first conducted business about one year ago, an
important point in judging the stability of the company.
The Google cache gives a street location for MedCenter Canada.com:
MedCenter Canada 76 - 1313 Border Place
Winnipeg, MB R3H 0X4
This is given explicitly as a mailing address. Now that we know where
medcentercanada.com is based, we can start looking for more
information about the business.
The Better Business Bureau of Manitoba does not list
medcentercanada.com or the pharmacy listed at the bottom of each
medcentercanada.com page, Medcenter Store, as a member:
http://www.bbbmanitoba.ca/member_directory_cat_6390-7185.html
Neither do they list any organization that is obviously related. This
is not necessarily a problem. Many fine businesses are not members of
the BBB.
Health Canada has a great page about buying drugs on line. It is at:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/iyh/medical/internet.html
Among their recommendations are:
Do not do business with a Web site that:
* refuses to give you a street address, telephone number, and a
way of contacting a pharmacist
* offers prescription drugs without a prescription, or offers to
issue a prescription based on answers to an on-line questionnaire
* claims to have a ?miracle cure? for any serious condition
* sells products that do not have a DIN (see below) issued by Health Canada
They also provide a list of "COMPANIES THAT HOLD A DRUG ESTABLISHMENT
LICENCE AS OF 2003/09/22". It is more recent than the oldest page for
medentercanada.com at the Wayback machine, and Medcenter (in any form)
does not seem to be on it, but that probably means nothing. Assuming
the information on their web site is accurate, they are almost
certainly operating out of a provincially, rather than federally,
regulated pharmacy.
The street address, on the other hand, seems to be slightly wrong. It
is given as 1313 Border Place, when in point of fact it is probably
Border Street. You can map it with mapquest:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=search&countryid=41&addtohistory=&country=CA&address=1313+border+place&city=winnipeg&state=mb&zipcode=R3H+0X4&submit=Get+Map
Here is a picture of the building:
http://www.morguardreit.com/cgi-bin/property.pl?008
This is an office buiding. It does not appear to be retail space, so
the question arises whether Medcenter Store is an actual store.
Also, the medcentercanada.com web site does not appear to mention DIN
numbers, but that does not mean that they are selling drugs without
DIN numbers, simply that theese are not made available prominently on
the web site.
The Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association, the agency that licences
pharmacies in the province of Manitoba, doesn't have a web site yet.
Nevertheless, their list of licensed Manitoba pharmacies can be
downloaded from the NAPRA web site here:
http://www.napra.org/docs/0/203/204.asp
The medcentercanada.com web site says: "All medications are dispensed
from our licensed Canadian Pharmacy. "
I have looked all through the list, and I cannot find an entry for
Medcenter or Med Center or Medcenter Store. Neither is there a
licensed pharmacy at any of the locations I have from the foregoing.
The FAQ from the Medcenter web site neatly sidesteps this question:
://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:dJsGgprBlUsJ:www.medcentercanada.com/faq/++site:www.medcentercanada.com+%22contact%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Quote:
Q: Are you licensed?
A: Yes. All of your prescriptions are reviewed and filled by
government licensed pharmacists and physicians.
This answer neglects to provide a 5-digit Manitoba pharmacy license
number, which would certainly make searching easier. That, along with
the fact that the list of licencees fails to mention Medcenter, leads
me to ask whether medcentercanada.com is, in fact, a provincially
licensed pharmacy.
You asked if Medcentercanada.cam was a legitimate company, and if it
could be trusted. In some sense, these facts should speak to those
questions. If by 'legitimate' you mean are they a licensed pharmacy,
then so far as I can determine from the information provided by the
web site, they are not. As to 'trusted', I cannot say. You will have
to draw your own conclusions.
I have not tried to contact them in person, nor am I likely to be able
to do so since their web site seems to be down. They may have
excellent answers to the questions I have raised. You may wish to ask
them yourself.
Alan Kali |
