A WELLINGTON woman has said she feels “stuck in a pharmacy nightmare” after repeated long waits which resulted in the wrong medicine being dispensed at a High Street chemist.

Carol Dabbs, 81, is one of a number of customers who reported being bogged down in queues in Wellington Boots which are so long they can take more than an hour to reach the front.

Ms Dabbs said she had resorted to arriving early at the chemist, standing in the rain to try and beat the wait. But she’s not the only early bird - with lines of customers now regularly seen outside of the Boots store before opening time all hoping to get their medicines in good time.

The waits were so long, Ms Dabbs said they made her feel unwell and claimed she had to abandon one attempt to collect her medication. She told the Wellington Weekly it took her a number of visits to collect penicillin for a chest infection. She said:

“I went into Boots on Thursday (February 8) to collect medicine for a chest infection. But there were eight people in front of me, and my legs became tired standing up waiting for so long. I eventually left feeling unwell.

“I asked a friend to pop in and collect the medicine for me later the same day, when there was a queue stretching to the back of the shop and another lengthy wait. But when she finally reached the dispensary counter, she was given the wrong medicine. Instead of penicillin for my infection she was given reflux medicine.

“The next day I turned up to wait outside the shop in the rain with my umbrella feeling very rough but there was already a queue. I asked to speak to the manager and said it’s just not acceptable. If I didn’t have my wits about me I would have taken gastric tablets for my chest infection.”

The Wellington Weekly was again alerted to mammoth queues on Wednesday, February 14, when local woman Fiona Barber reported being number 12 in line, with a further six customers standing behind her.

A man in his 70s said he had waited for over an hour to receive his prescription, and warned off a Wellington Weekly journalist from the in-store pharmacy, saying “I wouldn’t bother if I were you.”

While a woman customer leaving the queue expressed her relief that it only took half an hour to obtain her prescription.

Some residents feared that the congestion would only get worse when the Boots pharmacy by the Wellington Medical Centre on Mantle Street closes tomorrow (Saturday 17).

The closure is part of a nationwide shuttering of stores which has seen earmarked 300 for closure - though the town has been reassured Wellington’s High Street Boots is not under threat.

Concerns over the Mantle Street Boots pharmacy also centred around the difficulty of patients accessing town centre facilities which mostly did not have car parking available, and the risk of having to make a double journey if there were any queries on a prescription.

Boots were contacted for comment but did not respond before publication.