Terrible UX of the Day: Thanks for the Panic Washington Healthplanfinder

I received the following automated email yesterday from Washington Healthplanfinder, our state’s insurance exchange:

“Please log into your Washington Healthplanfinder account to view your Washington Apple Health Termination Notice notice.”

And yes, “Notice notice” is theirs. Anyway, seeing the words “Termination Notice” sent me into panic mode, reading it as “Your insurance has been terminated, log in to find out why.”

What it actually meant was “Please renew your coverage by November 30th.”

This wouldn’t have caused much stress if not for the fact that the email was sent at 6pm, and their website had been down since 1pm. It’s still down today, at 7:30am. I had to call and go through a phone tree five levels deep that ended in a loop to find out if our insurance was cancelled.

In fact, over the last two weeks I’ve tried to sign in to renew my coverage maybe 20 times, and not once have I been able to. Either the website is undergoing unplanned maintenance, planned maintenance, or simply times out at various steps.

1 Comment

  • Erin says:

    I got the email about the Washington Apple Health Termination Notice notice and then wasn’t able to log in on the website or the app and started panicking. Especially when I saw that it was down until Tuesday at 8am.

    I’m really glad I googled the subject line because one of the only things it brought up was this post. THANK YOU for posting about this years ago because this saved me from a stress-induced Crohn’s flare that would probably have put me in the hospital.

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