Every day and week I receive e-mail after email stating they are in a blood shortage and need blood and to please come donate. I feel obligated to donate and have never had a problem donating blood in the past. In fact I have given plasma for many many years.
My last 2 experiences donating blood were horrific. The staff was very young and NOT trained professionally to deal with the public day after day. They were not prepared with enough supplies so they had to use a blood pressure cuff to tourniquet my arm. There was no tape to anchor my needle in my arm so it ended up falling out. My phlebotomist was nowhere in site at this time because he and 6 others were observing a 1st time donor that was crying and freaking out. When I finally got his attention (after a couple minutes) he hollered for someone to go and grab some gauze. He brought only had a couple of 2x2 gauze pads and told him they were all out and this was all that was left. The blood was all over the chair, my arm and my shirt and pants. He took the needle out and gave me a band-aid to put on hole. All he could keep saying is how they were out everything today. He gave me a paper telling me if I had any problems with my arm or if I couldn't get the blood out of my clothes I could call the phone number on the paper and they would help me. He assured me that they would still be able to use my blood for testing purposes but was considered "contaminated" and couldn't be used on people since the needle partially came out. I was so frustrated because I have O- blood and anyone can receive my blood. The next incident I came in for an appointment at 7pm. I arrived at 7:04pm. I arrived late because I also had a patient that left my office later than expected. When I arrived I had the rapid pass pulled up and ready for them to scan They told me I could not donate because the system shuts down at 7:05pm. It was 7:04pm. I only know because I was looking at my phone. If they had the computers up and running still they could have seen me but they were already shut down and closed. They were very rude and told me that it wasn't there problem the system shuts down at 7:05pm and they could not see me. I quickly looked up to see 4 other people still hooked up and getting their blood drawn. The impression I got was they were done with the day. I will NOT be back. I'm SUPER FRUSTRATED with how this was all handled. Young kids with no experience and no leadership/PR skills. If this is where the American Red Cross is headed I am super disappointed and will not be back to donate.

I know 3-4 other people who have had same experiences as me. They will take down your information and make an appointment for you and it is hard to find an appointment and when you finally arrive at the appointment you are totally at their mercy. I arrived at my appointment on time and I could not find the building since all the doors were closed and no one was at the entrance so I called and no one picked up. 10 minutes passed by and I saw another donor leaving and ask another her how to get in and when I knocked at the door a red cross employee tried to ignore me. After I kept knocking they finally opened the door and said they were closed. And I told them I had an appointment and it had only been 10 mins since my appointment time and they said sorry we are closed we can't do anything. I told them I was there on time and they closed early and they wasted 10 mins of my time by not opening their doors and not picking up the phone and they wouldn't admit their fault or take my blood donation. I left and told them I never want anything to do with Red Cross.

Another person I know went to his appointment and was told he can't donate blood cause he may potentially have a disease since he travelled to another country a year ago and none of this was ever mentioned before the appointment was made and the country he visited was not included in the list of banned countries that are in the questionnaire before making the appointment. Another person I know couldn't donate blood cause he is gay and apparently red cross doesn't accept blood donations from sexually active gay members due to risk of AIDS/HIV even though anyone could have HIV/AIDS and the blood can be tested for it anyways. They can't rely on people's word to scan the blood for diseases.

Overall Red Cross is a scam and asks people for donations so their employees get paid and they can keep the organization running meanwhile innocent people who just want to donate blood have to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to donate blood. It should not be this hard to donate blood. Red Cross is always the first one to be present at natural disasters to collect peoples money and they have no shame at all. Most of the money donated to red cross doesn't even go to the cause or towards helping people, it goes towards maintaining the organization. The salary of Red Cross CEO is almost $700,000 a year. When I saw the red cross building I was shocked at how big it was and how much it would be costing them to keep this running. Employees of red cross don't care either since they are being paid no matter what.