I am 56 and became eligible to get the vaccine today. The earliest scheduled appointment through the VAMS website is May 5th. You can't log into the Hartford Healthcare website to schedule an appointment (it gives you an error code), and CVS and Walmart and Uconn says there are all booked.
The Walgreen's website shows they have appointments for this week for the first shot, but then says it cannot schedule your second shot so it won't book your first appointment????? None of the phone numbers anywhere work.
Anybody have any luck getting an earlier appointment of any tips or tricks to do it?
My CT story:
The Thursday before things opened up for the 65+ crowd, my sister called/txted (don't remember) with a phone number, and told me to skip pushing buttons and just timeout on the message and the hold. She said that her wait was 60 minutes. Mine ended up being 70 minutes, and I got a single appointment for March 4th.
A little more than 2 weeks ago, I got a robo-call from the New Haven Mayor, saying that they were opening up 2 large sites for the coming weekend, so I gave it a call to try and bump the date. I got through, and immediately told them that I was already booked. They told me I had to be sure to cancel my other appt as a courtesy to others. That's why I had led with that info. Didn't want to be a jerk. They took all of my info, and at the final step told me that they could not book because I was already booked, and that I'd have to cancel the other appt first. I decided against making a call to cancel, then calling back, doing a "Bird in the hand . . . " analysis. The primary consideration was that I hadn't had a single, "Damn, I wish I could get this a couple weeks earlier" though until the robo-call.
Then, last Thursday, at 5:01 pm, I got a txt from CVS saying, "We've got hundreds of vaccines for the next couple of days. Click here."
I got curious, clicked, and went through the online process, and scheduled for the next day. Part of it was that I had been seeing a number of friends who had initiated the process AFTER me getting their 1st shot BEFORE me. 19 hours later, I had my first Moderna, and I'd booked shot #2 during the initial online session. And the first thinig I did afterward was cancel my initial appt to lopen it up for somebody else.
There were a few (minor) hiccups at the vaccine CVS site (not the online registration, which was well-designed and went flawlessly). Overall, it was smooth, friendly, and efficient. Recommended.
Might be somewhat like sales pipelines, job searches, online dating, and such: keep open to multiple opportunities and the universe provides, even if it's not how you'd pictured it.
Today, I've read a lot of people telling what you havewritten . Remember: it's Opening Day for your age group. Don't despair; stick with it.
PS - I have a FEMA friend who's a major spreadsheet jockey, kicked into notably higher gear since mid-January.
