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MoGreenCard.com, a Missouri medical marijuana card company based in the St. Louis suburbs, was the subject of a new consumer warning issued by the Better Business Bureau on Monday.
“Use caution” when working with the company, BBB advised. “Consumers reported to BBB that the company failed to file paperwork with the state on their behalf, did not issue refunds, failed to communicate, and provided poor customer service,” the nonprofit watchdog group said Monday.
BBB gave MoGreenCard.com an “F,” rating, the lowest possible in its scoring system, according to a news release.
Patient: I had to go into ‘Karen’ mode to get customer service
Pineville resident Julie Cotton told the News-Leader on Friday that she had to get assertive to get MoGreenCard.com to pay attention to her customer-service issue.
“I had to go all Karen on them online with reviews,” Cotton said in an interview.
Cotton was one of several Missouri consumers based in locations across the state who reported problems with MoGreenCard.com to BBB. Stephanie Garland, Springfield BBB director, said Monday that consumers who reported issues were based in many Missouri locations, not just Pineville: They include Mt. Vernon, Nixa, Kimberling City, Carl Junction and Gainesville, along with St. Louis and southeastern Missouri.
Cotton said that early this year, she hired the company to provide her husband with an online appointment for a medical marijuana physician certification. That’s the paperwork needed to apply to Missouri’s medical marijuana program for a patient ID card. The cards are required by law to purchase cannabis products at licensed dispensaries.
The certifications are necessary to get the cards, and they’re essentially a doctor’s note letting the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services know that a patient is approved for marijuana as medicinal treatment, due to a specific health problem as listed out in Article 14 of the Missouri Constitution.
Big health systems like Mercy and CoxHealth rarely offer physician certifications for marijuana because the federal government classifies the plant as a controlled substance, so in states like Missouri, where medical marijuana is legal in defiance of federal law, special clinics open up to help patients get signed up for cards.
Seeking a physician certification for herself last summer, Cotton said she worked with MoGreenCard.com and had no problems.
But this year, it took months for her husband’s application to go through, she said: In January, Cotton paid MoGreenCard.com $200 to provide her husband with a certification appointment. That sum included an extra fee to file the doctor’s note with the state authorities, an online bureaucratic process that Missouri marijuana patients are allowed to work through on their own, but that many find difficult.
“You’re dealing with a moderately complex certification and application service that from the outside, from a patient’s viewpoint, can be quite confusing,” said Dr. James McEntire, a Grandview physician who told the News-Leader on Friday that he used to work with MoGreenCard.com.
More: Missouri starts revoking marijuana business permits at companies that didn’t meet operating deadline
He now has his own cannabis-card clinic. McEntire and MoGreenCard.com went their separate ways after working together for a few months in 2020, McEntire said. He said it wasn’t an amicable separation, but would not comment on the record about what he characterized as “he said-she said” details over why he quit working with MoGreenCard.com.
Cotton, the consumer, said it took months for her husband’s card application to go through MoGreenCard.com to state authorities.
“He had his appointment time with the doctor, and everything went well there,” Cotton told the News-Leader in an interview Friday evening. “And they approved him, but it was like their office people who took care of getting it filed with the state just dropped off. Basically, after the doctor appointment, he didn’t hear anything else. I think he got one email saying that they needed his login information with the state, and then he replied, and he didn’t hear anything else.”
Cotton said it was only in mid-March, many weeks after her husband’s certification paperwork had passed its 30-day expiration date, that the company reached out to correct the situation. Cotton said her husband had to have a new physician appointment to replace the expired paperwork, and MoGreenCard.com finally uploaded it to the proper authorities.
She said she doesn’t think MoGreenCard.com needs “to be shut down,” since they successfully reached out to her to fix her issue, but she said, “They can’t just be a reputable company, or otherwise they wouldn’t have let this amount of people slip.”
420ID now working with MoGreenCard patients
MoGreenCard.com is now in transition, entrepreneur Brandon Phillips told the News-Leader on Friday and Monday.
Phillips contacted the News-Leader after the newspaper reached out numerous times on Friday to MoGreenCard.com and Scott Essman, the man listed as company organizer on MoGreenCard.com’s state business-registration paperwork.
The News-Leader was not successful in reaching Essman by phone, email, social media message or text message, but Phillips said that another medical marijuana card company, St. Louis-based 420ID, was now handling patients who had experienced service issues with MoGreenCard.com. (BBB said Monday that it also couldn’t reach Essman or MoGreenCard.com when it attempted to ask about a “pattern” of complaints.)
420ID has an online BBB profile newly created on Monday, according to the website of the BBB. The profile lists 420ID’s parent company, Jellyfish LLC, which was established in Nov. 2019, according to state records. Regarding 420ID, BBB listed zero complaints and an A-minus rating.
More: Missouri extends deadlines after most medical marijuana businesses failed to open on time
Phillips said he is managing partner of 420ID and that his company “came to an agreement” verbally in February with MoGreenCard.com. He said that 420ID has spent several thousand dollars trying to clean up the mess left behind by MoGreenCard.
“We stepped in to help eliminate the situation where people were negatively affected as MoGreenCard did not have the resources and capacity… so we spent thousands of dollars to pick up everybody that got left behind and take great care of them,” Phillips said Monday afternoon. They have reached out to MoGreenCard patients who had service issues “multiple times” to make the situation right, Phillips said.
MoGreenCard.com took to Facebook on March 16 to say that anyone still waiting on their paperwork from January should contact them by calling 855-696-5022. When the News-Leader called the number on Friday, a recording identified it as belonging to 420ID. Phillips said they took over the phone line in mid-March
“We’re going to work to acquire the assets of MoGreenCard, because they fell behind,” Phillips also said.
“We’ll probably just acquire the patients and the (web) domain,” Phillips said Friday. “Because of their reputation, we’re not really interested in their brand.”
But Essman, cited by name in BBB’s consumer warning, may be a part of 420ID going forward, Phillips said Monday afternoon.
“He is not a shareholder in this, but as we finalize the acquisition of the assets, we may provide ownership to him and a minority stake,” Phillips said.
More: Flora Farms set to open as Springfield’s third dispensary for medical marijuana
The News-Leader reached out to the Missouri state health department on Friday and on Monday for comment about MoGreenCard.com allegations and state regulations covering the medical marijuana card system.
A DHSS spokesperson said by email, “Our regulatory authority is limited to the certifying physician and does not include the third-party businesses. We encourage patients to seek out a credible physician or check with the Better Business Bureau or other trusted entity before working with a third-party company. If they find themselves in this type of situation, we’d ask them to let us know and also report to authorities over business practices/fraud such as the BBB and Attorney General’s Office or local prosecutor.”
The health department said on January 19 that it was rolling out an online portal, required by state regulations, where Missouri physicians could directly upload marijuana patient certifications to state program authorities. It should be ready in June, roughly two years after Missouri health authorities began taking marijuana card applications from qualifying patients. (DHSS did not respond to questions about the online portal that the News-Leader posed Monday.)
Phillips said the portal would be helpful for companies like 420ID, where he is managing partner. “We love it,” he said.
He added, “It will actually make things quite a bit smoother if the doctors can turn things in right away. The current system isn’t set up for assistance very easily, and this will make it much more easy for assistance.”
420ID says on its website that it charges $50 for filing service, which includes the state government’s patient application fee. The physician certification appointment is typically $150. The company says it performs telemedicine marijuana card appointments for all of Missouri out of locations in St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City.
Missouri marijuana card clinics attracted accusations in recent years
MoGreenCard.com is not the first Missouri medical marijuana card company to attract accusations of various types of wrongdoing.
In the summer of 2020, Missouri health authorities said they believed St. Louis-based WeedCerts issued fake physician certifications to roughly 950 would-be Missouri marijuana patients. On July 24, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that DHSS told patients “someone impersonating a physician signed off on their certifications, and that (patients) would have 30 days to submit new paperwork to the state.”
More: Details emerge about ‘Farmer’s Wife’ medical marijuana dispensary on East Chestnut Expressway
In the Missouri medical marijuana program’s first full year, 2019, a company called Health City MD attracted accusations that along with selling marijuana card patient evaluations, it was also selling marijuana out of the back of its traveling “Cannabus.” Only state-licensed dispensaries may sell marijuana, under Missouri law. Health City MD would not comment when the News-Leader asked about those allegations at the time, but denied them when later asked by a St. Louis-area television station.
BBB marijuana card tips: Do your research
BBB noted that would-be Missouri medical marijuana patients may file their physician paperwork directly with state marijuana authorities. You are not required to have a marijuana card clinic do it for you.
BBB also had the following tips:
- Research any business and its owners carefully before paying any money. Check the company’s BBB Business Profile at bbb.org or by calling 888-996-3887.
- If you hire a company to file marijuana card paperwork for you, make sure you get in writing what will be done for you. Make sure you understand the business’s refund policy, should there be a problem with your application.
- Pay by credit card whenever possible, in case you need to challenge the payment.
- Learn more about Missouri medical marijuana regulations for patients. Contact the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services at medicalmarijuana.mo.gov or by calling 866-219-0165.
Reach News-Leader reporter Gregory Holman by emailing gholman@gannett.com. Please consider subscribing to support vital local journalism.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Better Business Bureau says ‘use caution’ with this Missouri medical marijuana card company
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