Dear Health Insurance Juggernaut, 

I am writing about your offensive, insulting, personally degrading website and phone system. 

The phone: 

First of all, how DARE you assign me a certificate number with LETTERS in it AND THEN kick me in the teeth by requiring me to enter it on a telephone with a numeric keypad. Because you didn’t plan ahead, your stupid recording actually has to stop to explain a byzantine set of directions about how I am supposed to take responsibility for your idiocy by typing in all kinds of junk to specify LETTERS and then press some other cryptic key to resume numeric entry. 

THEN, like stomping on my face, since you already have me on the ground, after going through all that (and God forbid I slip and hit the wrong key and have to start over) the first question your Rep asks me is “May I have your certificate number?” 

WHAT!!?!??!??!! 

Where did it go? I just typed it in! What was the point of that? A friggin’ aptitude test? Push a button on your little automatic phone-computer interface thingy and look it up. How DARE you ask me for my friggin’ certificate number as I sit here with my fingers sore and bloody from entering the million-place secret code on inadequate equipment. 

Website: 

Now let’s talk for a second about your website, which is the only reason I had to resort to calling you on the telephone. I was promised quick and easy access to my information at my convenience. Well, look, my convenience is not during the workday when I am actually WORKING to try to make a lousy dollar to pay all the medical bills that your insurance plan does not – which is, like, ALL of them. So, “convenient” is after work, when I should be sleeping – but that’s not happening either cause I’m too busy reading Shaw’s receipts – but that’s another story. 

So I go to log on ONCE IN A BLUE MOON to get my total claims for 2007. This is needed for tax purposes. The rest of the time, your website is a useless junkyard full of touchy-feelie stuff that’s supposed to make some lucky guy who manages to log in think you care about something other than the premium. You’ve managed to create pages and pages of illogically laid out garbage that sounds like it MIGHT be what I want to find out – until I click on it. Anyway, it’s been all of 4 or 5 months since I logged on – the last experience was too traumatic for me to come back sooner. In fact, some of my prescription expenses are no doubt due to you. 

Anyway (again), the website tells me my password has EXPIRED! What?!?!?!?! Do you know how hard I worked for that password? And I even wrote it down in my little magic book of passwords with other MILLION I have for everyone else’s “quick and easy” websites. It says I have to call the phone number on my card! So I do. Know what? You’re CLOSED when it’s “convenient” for me. You created this giant piece of crap technological nightmare of web and phone confusion and have the nerve to leave it unattended for so much as a second? Accessing my insurance information should not be a second CAREER. I shouldn’t need to do it from WORK. 

So the next day, at 8:25 am, during “normal business hours” as announced by the phone voice, when I called I got a message saying to call during normal hours of 8-5. Hello? Where are you? I call again and $*#$$)(Q#@$(@*(@($*!!!!!!. See the above tirade about your telephone system. The certificate number! Arrrrrgh! 

I decided NOT to play your game as long as I still have some freedom of choice. God bless the man who invented the ROTARY telephone. I just sat there in silence, watching the minutes of the workday tick away, until a human came on the line (though admittedly a Neanderthal who is just a cog in your giant machine with no real knowledge or power to change anything). She gave me a new temporary password to log on with. A real catchy easy to remember one – like 2Wfg6#5C!!&U. I wrote it down in my magic password book, erasing the TWO prior ones that now no longer worked. 

Then, of course, I also needed a new one for my WIFE, because I need her claims history too for tax purposes and if I ask her to get it she’ll plead incompetency, lack of time, and divorce me. That’s because she has heard from me the crap (above) she’d have to go through to get it. You, of course, are so mortally afraid of the HIPAA monster strangling you in a dark alley that you have balkanized our accounts so that I needed to create a separate user ID and password for her even though IT’S STILL ME logging in and viewing all her personal information. Well, fortunately I knew all the down and dirty on my wife – date of birth, SS#, favorite drink – LITERALLY! That was the answer to the “secret question” that might have released the password if it hadn’t EXPIRED! Who am I, Jason Bourne? Do I have to know my wife’s shoe size? Well, I knew enough – cause I’m that good of a husband. And I got another temporary password. (I actually think your employee bent the rules out of pity for me. You’re gonna fire her now, aren’t you?) 

So with jittery anticipation, I logged on to your website. I entered my new password. The computer thinks for moment, then….up pops a window saying I have to change my password first thing. 

WHY? 

What password could be better? Who the hell could possibly guess OR REMEMBER such an abstract password as the one you gave me? I had to write it down in my little book. 

So I promptly pick a new, memorable, less secure password. I enter the old password. I enter the new password. I “confirm” the new password. I click OKAY. I should be able to get MY OWN INFORMATION NOW, right? Surely now I’ve cracked the Navajo-Code-Talker-Rosetta Stone cipher? 

NO! 

Now it kicks me out and tells me I actually have to log in with the NEW PASSWORD! Remember, people, I am trying to get my work day started here! I wasn’t clever enough to set up a whole friggin’ health care system where people pay an arm and a leg for nothing and get run into bankruptcy because they got sick and are lucky enough to live in a country with the best and most expensive care in the world. 

So I log in with the new password. I get my data printed. I get my daughters’ data printed. All of it no doubt being intercepted by hackers, al Qaeda, and the Department of Homeland Security – and my Google toolbar. Oh well – it’ll bore them to death. Who the hell cares what ailments a middle-aged Mainer has? What, are you goin’ to date me? Introduce me to your parents? Somebody gonna get a credit card in my name with my prescription history? Don’t think so. 

Of course, I’m not allowed to have my wife’s data straight up, even though she’s on MY HEALTH INSURANCE and I know her bra size and her favorite drink. Actually the second is how I learned the first. 

Anyway, I log out, log back in as her (should I wear a bra and skirt while I do it?) (keeping in mind she doesn’t even know she has an account, a user id, or a password) and print out her claims history….but noticing with an icy chill down my spine that nothing before May 2007 shows up… 

You know what that means…I’m going to have to call and enter my certificate number again… 

Dear Grocer: 

I am writing to you about your piece-of-crap, biblical-epic-length, receipts. Knock it off. 

Your idiotic itemization of the things I purchase is pointless and psychotic. Who really cares to have a subtotal of what they spent on “frozen food” vs. “hot foods” vs. “candy” vs. “household items.” How do you even decide what is a household item. I took it ALL home. Isn’t all of it household items? 

Your receipt says “CRAZY ABOUT FOOD.” You got the crazy part right. Crazy about bookkeeping I’d say. I don’t need a subtotal for pet food, or bakery, or meat. And my favorite is the section labeled “Grocery”. What the hell is the rest of it? Auto parts? And there’s a friggin’ section marked “cheese shop.” Are you kidding? Where’s the friggin’ cheese shop? Are there little chairs and little British man named Wallace who can tell me all about the origins of the little cheeses? Are there free samples and wine? Little cutting boards and special knives? 

What I REALLY want and NEED to know, when I’m balancing the checkbook, is the TOTAL. You know, total DOLLARS. Not total number of items purchased. I couldn’t care less about that. That’s just something you want to keep track of so you can get a pat on your back from headquarters because your store sold more than the one in Skowhegan. 

Instead, the dollar total is buried in fine print, not even set out or boldfaced for quick reference. It is buried in obscurity, not even at the END of the receipt, where one would rationally locate the total. No, you’ve managed to come up with a bunch more useless crap to put there. Like my “Savings Summary.” Are you serious? Savings? I JUST SPENT $262.64! That’s no savings. I don’t go to the store to save. If I want to save, I stay home in the dark and eat old shoe leather. 

And what the heck is the “Ref #” and the “Resp #” ? Have you ever Ref’d those in your life? And why after my Savings Summary is there a separate heading, “Today’s Total Savings”. Have you ever given someone YESTERDAY’S total savings? 

GET ALL THE CRAP OFF MY RECEIPT. IT SHOULD NOT BE FIVE FEET LONG. It is bad for the environment to be wasting linear miles of paper. And all the chemicals necessary to print that much ink. And the undue wear and tear on your registers is not profitable. My wife’s purse is stuffed like a friggin’ garbage sack and the basket of receipts looks like a big ‘ol paper monster came along and barfed in it. 

Look, if I want a good book, I’ll go to Barnes & Noble. I don’t have time to read right now anyway because I’m staying up all night trying to find the totals on your stupid receipts. I want two simple columns. Left – stuff. Right - $. ONE total at the end in BOLD. With the date to the left of it. 

Please improve my shopping experience.