What a hassle to try to set up a vaccination appointment with a large national pharmacy!

Their online form indicated that providing my phone number would indicate consent to receiving marketing correspondence so I called in instead hoping to set up an appointment while not providing that consent.

I called their nearest location directly but navigating the phone tree got me to their main switchboard so I asked them to redirect me to the specific location, which took a long time for them to understand that request for some reason...

When I finally got connected, I was told that I can only set up an appointment online or via the main number.

So back to the main switchboard I go and when I connected, they sounded perplexed that I didn't want to use their online form but allowed me to set up an appointment directly over the phone.

But wow, it's like that person never did such a thing and went through each question so slowly that it's clear they're looking up the procedure as they go.

While they were looking things up, I looked things up myself and discover that the local hospital is taking appointments and their online form has no such marketing consent disclaimer so I went ahead and signed up with them.

My mistake was trying to go national -- stay local!