21 September 2015

One Fact, One Place, One Time. Dr. Codd Said So.

So, the health insurance company decided that pestering clients into doing prescribed activities will lower health care costs. Naturally, if that were actually true HMOs, which originally stood for Health Maintenance Organization and has since morphed to Healthy Members Only as we all know, would have markedly lower costs. They don't, at least for some fixed definition of "average patient". Most health care costs are devoted to birthing kids and cancer. If only we could stop both from happening.

So, last year was kind of a mess, getting a physical, which they call something entirely different, and which my PCP office didn't schedule. Rush, rush at the end of December to get this done. No thanks, this year.

So, I go to the site to check what they think I haven't had done to my frail, quaking frame. Well, first I go to my usual suspect notes for the uid/pwd for the site. Hmm? Now, where did I write that down? So, I go to the login in page anyway. Type in my universal uid/pwd. Get back a message telling me it's wrong and I should "login appropriately". Well, yeah. I would if I could. The login page has no link to the Forgot uid/pwd page. There does have to be one, yes? So, I troll back to the Home of Home page, and find a link to Forgot uid/pwd. Type in my email address, which is all that's been entered so far. It says I don't exist. OK. So, I go to the Create New Account page. "You already exist. Please login appropriately". Cute.

So, there is a help email address. I send a mail to said address. Get one back saying, in essence, what site are you trying to login in to? Turns out, help has been outsourced to an outfit that doesn't know which of the 75 it gets paid to help, to help. So, I send back the insurer's site. Help Outfit sends back an email that my help needs have been forwarded to the insurer and will be fixed by someone at the insurer, real soon now. I wonder if they get paid as much as bankers do? Both just pass something through their hands as that something moves from point A to point B. That was all on Saturday. Today, the following occurred (names redacted to protect the stupid).

Hello,

We received your online request for assistance with your XXX online account. We require more information to locate your account & reset it. Please provide me with your name, address & date of birth. If you prefer, you may also call the number below for assistance M-Th 8am-6:00pm & Friday 8:00-5:00pm.

Note that all input from me was my email address. One hand thinks it exists, another doesn't. But, I send off the request.
Dear Mr. Young,
Did you have a recent change of address? I do not have this address listed in my system. I want to assist you , but I need to make sure I'm assisting the correct person, as there are multiple participants with the same name in our system.

No. I've lived in the same drafty garret for decades. And, despite Jim Anderson and Dr. Welby, Young families still persecute their sons. Don't blame me for endless doppelgangers.
You have been issued a login with a 10 character temporary password for the following website: XXX
Please login with the information below.

Username: XXX
Password: XXX
(Please remember passwords are case sensitive)

So, I do. Whilst doing so, the following arrived
Dear Mr. Young,

I found your record and added your email address to your file. That might have been why the system stated the email address was invalid. I have sent you a temporary password to access the system, it will be coming from our vendor XXX, please use it along with your username: XXX

To access the system. Once in you will be prompted to change your password. Your new password needs to be between 8-20 characters with at least one capital letter, one lower case letter and one number. Please let me know if you are having further difficulties.

Stupid kiddies. One fact, one place, one time. If only they'd remember that rather than getting hardons from writing their own oh-so-clever file-based APIs. And all those Soft Skills for Developers mavens wonder why I get so cranky. Such stupidity is clearly the result of concerted agile team building. Scrum Masters Must Die!!! Bring Me The Head of Scrum Master!!! We're Gonna Need A Bigger File!!!

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