So, after many years of not having health insurance I finally dropped the hammer, and filled out the application.
I got the card from them. I went on their website to finish the registration and that was annoying but not overly enraging.
Mind you, I’ll not be taking my BP anytime soon!
I get that there’s all kinds of notices, acknowledgments, agreements, and stuff. But Damn!
On these websites, it’s the little things. They’ll tell you to enter a number, but provide no clue about how that number should be formatted, inevitability your entry is somehow wrong, then you try to fix it and they erase the whole field. Just FYI, I entered the number including the spaces and dashes exactly as they’d printed it on their little card.
It’s those kinds of things that make websites frustrating.
Another classic is they wanted a phone number. Okay, My computer helpfully pasted the phone number in as (NNN) NNN-NNNN. The website corrected this to NNN-NNN-NNNN. Great! That’s what I’d expect.
What I didn’t expect was the website, after correcting the number to their preferred format, wouldn’t accept the corrected number, with the changes they’d made. I had to blank out the field and enter number again. This time in their preferred format from the get go.
Sigh…
This is what comes from exclusively automated testing. This is why a human being on the keyboard working with the web page is important. Automation is freaking great to catch regressions, but it rarely catches things like this because of the inherent bias of the preprogramed input dataset.
Anyhoo, I fought through that mess and it’s really obvious that there are different groups working on different parts of the programming. Some parts of the site correct and accept normal deviations. Other parts correct but don’t accept the same normal deviations.
This too is why a real person sits down with the program and looks at not only the function of the programming, but also at how the various parts of the site integrate with each other.
Not that many corporations seem to care about user functionality/experience these days.
Then I spent time with their mobile application. My blood pressure increased! However, it appears I got it linked to the web application properly. At least I’m seeing the same data in both places.
Since I was sitting here with all the health shit already out, I decided to change pharmacies. My local Rite Aid pharmacy will close mid July. There is as yet no information if the building will be sold, and a new pharmacy will open in its place. The rest of the Rite Aid, the retail portion will close mid August. I guess they can’t reveal any information about what’s going to happen to the building until then.
So I signed up with Walgreens. Their site kept trying to send me to North Victorville, bypassing 3 locations in Hesperia, and another 2 locations nearer to my house. However, the really convenient location for me is next to the Costco down in Fontana, near the bank, and the grocery store.
I rarely go to Victorville, and NEVER go to North Victorville because it’s not near anything or anyplace I do business.
The Walgreens site (AND Their Application) was equally annoying with clearing fields, rejecting passwords, (because they don’t like dashes or spaces. And when it came time to enter the prescription information they wanted a photo of the RX from the bottle. Trouble is, the text on the photo was unreadable because the bottle is a 90 day supply and their photo controls wouldn’t allow me to focus on the important bits of the label. Their “AI” was apparently looking for an object and didn’t care if the labeling on the object was readable or not.
Again… This is why you have a real person interacting with the application / web site.
I’ll wait for them to call me… Or If I don’t hear anything from them in a few days, I’ll fill out the transfer form on their website since that’s text only.
Then just to top off the list of annoyances, I ran into my neighbor at the gas station and he was asking why a roll of 5 Zyn packages went up $10 between last week and today. The clerk (who’s just above drooling on herself,) said the special had ended. My neighbor wasn’t happy and pointed out that the price behind her for the product was posted $10 less than she’d just tried to charge him.
The mouth breather shrugged her shoulders and called the manager at home. After a lot of “Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, and saying, he can see the old price behind me, then uh huh, uh huh, uh huh,” she hung up. My neighbor said “Well?” As she looked at him with cow eyes highlighting her mental deficiency.
She said, “That’s the old price.”
At this point because I’m a real bastard. I told my neighbor to take a picture of her, the shelf tag behind her, and forward ti to the State of California consumer protection / fraud department.
I explained that California has pretty strict consumer protection laws regarding bait and switch. In California, you must sell a product at the price shown on the shelf, or advertising materials displayed in store. It’s not the consumer’s problem that the store employees didn’t take the advertising down, or couldn’t be bothered to do their job changing the shelf prices.
When I left, she was practically crying because she didn’t know how to make a deduction on the cash register, and he was being adamant. Other people in line were holding up their Zyn boxes and nodding with every point he made. The line was getting longer by the second, the gas pumps were all blocked, and people were starting to get really irritated. Poor dear, she must’ve had a very bad first hour of her shift all alone…
There are times when I really like being Loki!
I was curious, so I came home a looked up, or tried to look up all the new California taxation that went into effect yesterday. Most of the news channels only covered 2 or 3. The Fox website didn’t even mention the increased excise fee on gasoline. They mentioned pet insurance companies being required to explain rate changes, and Air B&B cleaning fees. They didn’t mention minimum wage being jacked up again. Or the minimum wage for hotel workers going up to $20 per hour.
The other TV station web sites were doing puff pieces but not listing all the changes.
I went to a California Tax/Fee watchdog site, (listed four pages down the google search results,) and found that Cannabis, excise taxes had gone up, as had tobacco, gas, Air B&B, The Pet Insurance disclosure, Hotel wages, Minimum wages in select counties, and several others.
Non cigarette tobacco products jumped 54.7%
So the special on Zyn wasn’t over, the State of California had decided to impose another “Sin” tax. They may also have increased the taxes on alcohol. Of course, the mouth breather clerk had neither the intelligence or English fluency to provide a proper answer.
In California, “YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE YOUR RECREATIONAL MATERIALS WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY SACRAMENTO TAXES ON THEM!”
According to Sacramento… “It’s for your own good. Think of the children! We’re trying to make sure you’re healthy.”
And Newsom wonders why companies, and people are leaving. There comes a time when the state steps in and denies personal freedoms enough, that people say, “Fuck this!”
The neighbor just came home. He sent a text saying, “Thank you. He purchased 10 rolls instead of one, and he got them at the old price after dragging the manager of the place in, on her day off.”
Apparently everyone else after him cleaned their entire supply of Zyn out at the old price.
Sometime, I really love being a fucker.
Now I need to take an aspirin. Working with those websites gave me a headache. I am not going to work on the painting and sanding.