Tips from a Healthwick Customer Care Agent

This article was written by our Customer Care Agent, Caitlin.

As a Customer Care Agent, I have had the opportunity to educate many people on the ins and outs that I think are beneficial for our customers to know.

Here are some of my top tips and factoids, to ensure that you receive exactly what you want and need.

1. There are two main types of incontinence wear 

And it can cause quite an unpleasant mix-up if you don't know the proper vernacular.

Briefs (Adult Diapers) - This is the traditional style, with tabbed closures on the side.
Underwear - These are the pull-up style that resemble a typical pair of cotton underwear.

2. Your clothing size does not necessarily reflect the size of the product you will need.

Someone will rarely be the same size across the board, as dimensions vary greatly between makes and models. 

For example, here are measurements for the size Large in three different products; two of which are the same brand:

TENA® Super Plus Incontinence Underwear for Women Size L fits 37”-50”
TENA Proskin Overnight Underwear Size L fits 45"-58"
NorthShore GoSupreme Underwear Size L fits 36”-48”

This is why we stress the importance of taking your measurements.

You will need to measure at your waist (where the belly button hits) and your hips (at the top of the hip bone, just above the buttocks) and then shop according to the larger of the two.

A proper fit ensures that you are less likely to encounter leakage and discomfort.  

3. Wearing more products at the same time does not mean you will have more protection or absorbency. 

Products are designed for specific purposes.

You wouldn't wear a toque under a baseball cap to get more sun coverage. Please don't wear two diapers at once, or a regular pad inside of pull-up underwear. This only increases your chance for leakage. 

4. These products are a necessity that you do not want to be without.

Make sure to keep track of your stock and order well enough in advance.

As a kid, whenever I would go on vacation my Mother would tell me to pack an obscene amount of underwear. Going away for a weekend? 14 pairs of underwear should do the trick! Did I ever need those 12 extra pairs? No! But I was prepared for the worst case scenario.

I suggest preparing in the same way.

Make sure that you have some "just in case" diapers set aside. Be prepared for a manufacturer delay, a postal truck catching fire during delivery, a dinosaur escaping the park and stomping through our warehouse.

You never know what can happen, so don't wait until you are down to your last pair to replenish your stock. 

5. Once your order has left our warehouse, it is in the hands of that delivery service.

We have a partnership with Canada Post and UPS to deliver orders from our warehouse to our customers.

We can certainly write request notes on the shipping labels, such as "deliver directly to the door" or "take directly to the post office for pick up", but we can not ensure that the individual making 100+ deliveries per day noticed that note.

Please be patient with us if it hasn't been delivered according to your request. We will try to help as much as we can with getting the problem sorted out. 

And finally, 

6. Please do not be embarrassed or ashamed to reach out to us and ask questions. 

All of us at Healthwick are here to help you.

We love to share our knowledge, as well as learn from our customers.

The ultimate goal is to take as much worry and stress about your incontinence away from you as possible. There are better things to be thinking about in this life!