Worst Websites Ever

[Nancy OShea]

We often bash Adobe for having one of the least user-friendly websites around.  I am not arguing that Adobe's site leaves much room for improvement but compared to what I experienced yesterday from my health insurance provider's website, Adobe's site doesn't seem nearly so bad anymore.

Without naming names, I will just say that this is a major health insurance company. So large in fact that my State's Governor put them in charge of distributing ALL Covid vaccines here.  But their website really, really sucks!  So my confidence in them is not running high at the moment.

After a miserable experience trying to enter my primary care doctor's name and a payment method so I could make an online payment, I had to give up.  Nothing I tried worked with any browser from any of my computers.  

I decided to complete an online form to give them some feedback about the site, there was a drop-list for selecting my  operating system.  The choices (I can't make this stuff up):

Android

iPhone

Win95

Win98

Win2000

WinXP

WinVista

Win7

Mac

Other

There was no mention of a modern OS which tells me their site hasn't been updated in a long while. So now I have to call them on the phone and listen to music  -- "S u * c i d e  is Painless" (aka the MASH theme) or similar  -- for 30-90 minutes while I wait for a rep.  😞

[Leslie Moak Murray]

They need you Nancy!

[Nancy OShea]

Maybe not me.  But they NEED something and fast! 🙂

[Peru Bob]

When I tried to sign up my 100 yr. old father-in-law for his Covid shot, I couldn't properly fill out the form beacause the age entry only allowed two digits.  I lied and typed 99 and it worked, even though the date of birth did not match the 99 entry.

[Nancy OShea]

Yup.  With so many people living beyond 99, that's a problem for sure.  I wonder if it would have accepted 00 or 02, 03, etc...

Were you able to get an appt for him?

[Peru Bob]

Yes, it finally was accepted and he had his first shot. When he he got the shot at the pharmacy, they had automatically scheduled his second shot, so we didn't have to go through the website again.

[Peru Bob]

 I wonder if it would have accepted 00

It may have, but it likely would have disqualified him because 00 is less than 75, the minimum age here now.

[John T Smith]

My health provider has a waitlist page for a covid vaccination (series of questions on pages) and when I got to the end... it just went back to the first page, so I don't know if I've been added to the waitlist... or not

[Liam Dilley]

The main site is using Adobe Experience Manager.

While I get that for the data management side it is out dated in what it can do on the front end but I also do not think the time and effort is spent even there for such a big company.
You even get the country popup here in Australia and it thinks your in New Zealand 😞 And plenty of strange CSS and HTML behavior and site just broken 😞

[jane-e]

"and a payment method so I could make an online payment"

I thought the vaccine is supposed to be free.

[Nancy OShea]

Not related to Covid vaccine. I was attempting to pay my health insurance which is NOT free in the USA unless one is lucky enough to be on gov't subsidy or Medicare.

Vaccine distribution is handled separately.  My husband got a text message on Saturday from his health care provider (not insurance provider) offering him vaccine but he didn't react fast enough.  All appts were gone within 5 minutes of the text message going out.

[Trevor.Dennis]

If someone like yourself is finding the site problematic, then what chance Joe Average?   Someone in the government will have a son who has made a coupe of sites with Wordpress and Wix, and convinced his department to invest millions of dollars in the company he and his lad quickly cobbled together for the sake of the contract.

[Nancy OShea]

Health insurance companies in the US are privately owned corporations. My health insurance company's stock is  trading on the NYSE at about $297/share ($407 in New Zealand).  Our government has no say in how the website works, except maybe when it directly effects government employee health plans.

I agree with you about the "son/nephew built this" website for small businesses.  We see those all the time.  But US insurance companies receive billions in annual revenue. They can well afford to hire top-notch web teams if they choose to make that their priority.