How The Dose Club checks pharmacy prices
Where the figures in the price table come from, how often they are checked and what counts as the price.
Every figure in the Dose Club price table is the complete monthly cost of a medicine at a named pharmacy: the medicine itself plus any consultation and delivery fee the pharmacy makes compulsory. A headline price that leaves out a fee you cannot avoid is not the price you pay, so The Dose Club does not list it that way.
What is in a price
| Included | Not included |
|---|---|
| The medicine at the listed dose for one month | Introductory offers and codes |
| Compulsory consultation fees | Optional extras such as express delivery |
| Compulsory delivery fees | Prices from pharmacies without GPhC registration |
Standard prices only. Codes, promotions and paid placements never change a figure in the table, and no row is sponsored.
How often prices are checked
A collector visits each provider's pages every one to three hours. It reads the structured data on the page first and the visible HTML second, identifies itself as a bot and follows each site's robots.txt. A row is written only when a price changes, and a screenshot is saved with every change so a figure can be verified later.
Each cell shows the time of its last check. A price that has not been confirmed in the last 24 hours is shown as "checking", because a figure that old might be wrong.
Large moves
A move of more than 20 percent in either direction is held for review before it is published. A separate article explains what that review involves.
Which pharmacies are listed
Only pharmacies registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) appear, and each provider page shows the registration number. Providers can also submit prices through a provider portal. A submitted price is checked the same way as a collected one before it appears.
Reporting a wrong price
Every row has "Report a wrong price" and "Report out of stock". Reports go into a verification queue that staff work through, and a report that turns out to be right earns the reporter reputation points in the community.
Sources
- General Pharmaceutical Council register of pharmacies: pharmacyregulation.org
- The Dose Club, What happens when a price moves more than 20 percent (article on this site)
This article is information, not medical advice. Talk to your prescriber about your treatment.
- prices
- collector
- methodology