So I got a letter from my medical insurance carrier. Apparently, they sent me a check in January that I never cashed (actually, I never got it).
The letter tells me that I can respond online ONLY if I’m requesting a replacement check. Well, that’s what I’m doing, so I head on over to https://www.myhealthplan-financeresponse.com (go ahead and click it. It just takes you to the un-filled out form).
When I fill out the form, before it will let me click “Submit,” the page directs me to add an electronic signature. Well, how do I do that? I mean, I’ve electronically signed documents before, but it has always been done with some tool or utility that’s included in the document (which is usually a PDF, which this isn’t. It’s just a page that came up when I entered a url).
I spent about an hour looking up tutorials and such for creating an electronic signature, without much success. Everything I found was geared toward PDFs. Finally, in frustration, I just hit the “Submit” key, only to be prompted yet again, to affix my Electronic Signature. So I went to the Electronic Signature field and typed, as sarcastically as I could, “How?”
Now I’m pretty good at typing things sarcastically. I could tell you stories about how my rapier wit has driven actual webpages to actual tears (they’ll pretty much all be made up, of course, but that’s another issue entirely). But I digress. No sooner had I finished typing “How?” than the page popped up a helpful instruction: “Only enter letters.”
I typed my name into the field and clicked “Submit.” I was rewarded with a screen proclaiming “Success Thank you, we have received your information. Please call the number on the form you received in the mail if you have any questions.”
Oh, I have questions, all right. The most pressing one is: what’s the best way for me to call that number and be connected to the actual person I’m addressing the question to, instead of a voice mailbox that promises to get back to me within two days? I mean, I just want the question answered WHEN I ASK IT but I’m willing to be flexible and ask it within a time window that’s convenient for you.
Another question I have is: why couldn’t you have put this information about the Electronic Signature somewhere on your online form, or at least addressed it in your FAQs?
A third question is: what security goal is being achieved by having the Electronic Signature field be satisfied by TYPING OUT MY NAME?