Stop CVS Relocation - Call Corporate

[reeta]

Susan Rabbit wrote this, and asked me to pass it on:

I just called the CVS corporate customer complaint line and spoke to a very nice and responsive woman named Catherine, about the CVS Sebastopol new location mess. I could hear her taking detailed notes on her keyboard the whole time I talked. The number is 401-770-2645.

After she listened to me for over 10 minutes, she told me this feedback was very important, put me on hold to make sure she was sending her notes on to the right person. She asked me to please share the number with whoever I could. She wanted more people to call about their concerns, because she said she thought they needed to hear this.

The gist of my arguments I said against the move were:
I told her what a big expensive mistake I thought it was that CVS was trying to move to the worst traffic corner of Sebastopol, the east end of town. That most people in town that I talked to, thought this was a awful idea. That the employees of CVS who I talked to, including management, begged me to call corporate, thought it was an awful idea. That customers in line were all agreeing that obviously someone who didn’t live here was making a classic big mistake. That many are fighting the city council about the proposed new CVS location, and I was getting regular emails about it. A source at CVS told me (approvingly) that a law suit has been filed to block it.

I told her how bad traffic is on the east end of town. How hard it would be to find parking, for pedestrians to cross the street, or to turn left across 12 if you were coming home from Santa Rosa. I told her I didn’t just think this was people resistant to change, but really a bad idea that pretty much anyone local recognizes.

I told her that the CVS name was being associated with a lot of bad will, and with a nightmare, boner of a mistake. That I thought this was going to be a public relations nightmare for CVS.
I thought it was bad for CVS as well as for Sebastopol. That they would probably lose more business than they would gain. They would probably lose my business and a lot of other people’s because of the headache of trying to get there. Bottle neck, bottle neck, bottle neck, etc.

I then told her that the current CVS store has easy parking, easy traffic flow, a good controlled intersection for getting in an out, is on the west end of town which is able to serve all of west county residents who come in from out of town. The store is big and roomy and clean. I told her that the shopping center is clean and well kept up, that there are other places nearby that people visit – exchange bank, hardware store, lucky’s etc.

[Helen Shane]

Thanks to Reeta and Susan Rabbitt for the remarks regarding calling corporate CVS. I don't want to discourage anyone from doing anything they can to discourage the CVS/Chase location move.

Good idea, too, to write letters to the editor to both Sonoma West and the Press Democrat to get your views out to the newspaper reading people in the greater Sebastopol community.

Thanks for stepping up. I'd be happy to hear from others who are taking action on this issue. Helen Shane