Columnist Muriel Stevens: Explanations no walk in the park

Wednesday, July 25, 2001 | 8:36 a.m.

Muriel Stevens' shopping and travel columns appear Wednesday. Her dining column appears Friday. Reach her at 259-4080 or muriel@lasvegassun.com.

Charging $2 for valet parking didn't make any friends for the Desert Passage mall, so it finally removed the fee. No longer do shoppers have to pay to valet park. I usually used the Aladdin valet service: no charge, no hassle, easy access.

So why would the Boulevard mall after so many years of free parking decide now to charge for its valet service? Trying to get a straight answer from the mall people was almost as frustrating as the number of calls I had to make.

Depending on the person I was talking to, the charge is either $2 or $3. Is it really possible that no one in the Boulevard's offices knows how much customers are being charged to valet park?

The defensive reaction to this simple question leads me to believe I'm not the first one to ask it. Even worse was what the first person I spoke with gave as the reason: "We hired a new valet company because our old one didn't make enough money to pay for insurance."

When I asked if this meant that all of us who had used the previous valet did so at our own risk (I never noticed a disclaimer), I was told to call someone in public relations. The person in PR who answered the phone also couldn't or wouldn't answer any questions. And she was another one who didn't know what was the valet fee.

"It's a private company," she explained. Then I asked, "Didn't the mall hire them? Wasn't this question asked before they were hired?"

This query led me to yet another person, Jeff Kurtz, director of operations for the Boulevard mall. He didn't answer, so I left a message detailing what I wanted to know, but never received a reply. Maybe he was tied up trying to decide whether to charge $2 or $3 for valet parking.

My last call was to Fashion Show mall. Without any ado I was connected to Director of Marketing Karen Kozemchak, who answered my questions and assured me that valet parking was still a free service and that there was no talk of charging for the service.

Who knows what the future holds, but for now Fashion Show offers free valet service outside at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus entrances and inside the parking garage in the blue zone.

According to Kozemchak, additional valet stations will be added when the new addition, doubling the size of the mall, is completed in 2002.

Seniors and prescription drugs: Seniors who, until recently, traveled to other countries to buy prescription drugs for less money than they normally pay here can now use e-mail to import their drugs.

This is according to Michael McCormick, developer of Medicines.MD. "Seniors are saving hundreds each month by following the FDA process for importing prescription drugs by mail order."

Importing prescription drugs by mail is not a new process. For some years the FDA has been offering consumer guidelines to assure the best results.

Medicines.MD offers updated price listings for more than 2,000 prescription medicines. By using the free price quote feature on Medicines.MD prices can easily be compared.