Molotov

http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/
This site fucking SUCKS.

Firstly, they've messed up their security certificates, so half their content doesn't load when you move to the "secure" parts of the site.

Secondly, if I want to set up online access, I have to fill in my details to request a password, which is mailed to me (eventually). When it arrives, I have to enter:
1) Medicare number
2) "Individual Access Number" (in which order was I born, compared to my siblings)
3) My date of birth
4) The magical password they mailed me.

And then... not 1, not 2, but FIVE secret questions.

Five.

You know:

"What is your mother's maiden name?"
"What was the colour of your first dog?"
"What was the name of that girl who blew you in the front seat of your car after watching Casper the Friendly Ghost?"

Seriously, this isn't my Swiss fucking bank account, it's Medicare. What's some malicious hacker going to do? Break in and see a doctor? Have their varicose veins fixed at taxpayers' expense?

Whatever. Five stupid questions that anyone could figure out by talking to my family later, and we reach the point where I can, nay must change their magical password into one of my choosing. So I do that.

And the site chokes. Can't do anything, the whole thing won't load any more. Presumably it's still struggling to resolve that shitty security certificate that they never bothered to fix.

So I close the window and load Medicare back up again, and try to log in.

But no... neither of my passwords (magical original or one of my choosing) are correct apparently and, oop, I've exceeded the number of login accounts and am locked out for 2 hours.

OR! I can choose to reset my password.

So fine, reset my password... only... the fuckers haven't got my email address. That part of the quiz of joy came after the password part, and if you remember, the site choked at that stage, so I never got a chance to give it to them.

So what the fuck are they going to do? Mail it out again? That's tax money well spent, morons. Maybe if you took the money spent on postage of useless crap and spent it on getting a standards compliant website with a working and up to date sec cert, the site would actually work instead of just pissing me off for 2 hours.

But none of that is relevant, since it can't get passed the initial stage of password reset - once I enter my details, the site just chokes again.

FUCK.

I just want to give them my bank details so they can direct deposit refunds from doctors instead of MAILING ME A FUCKING CHEQUE EVERY TIME.

It just makes me want to ragequit the public health system.

so healthe-rage

thats a new one.

But what really makes me seethe is the fact that the organisation who are apparently going to be responsible for filtering our intertwits are actually supposed to be in charge of making sure gubment websites aren't utter shit.

Which would be a worthwhile task to undertake, because some of the worst websites in Australia end in .gov.au

Haha, we had the same issues so we just picked up the paper form, filled it out manually and sent it via snail mail.

/comfort

Tassia wrote:Haha, we had the same issues so we just picked up the paper form, filled it out manually and sent it via snail mail.

/comfort

It actually worked in the end - it's quite bizarre.

I left the site while I was ranting, and all the "secure" stuff loaded in the background v-eee--eee-rrr-rr-r-r-y sl-oooo-oooo-oowly. I'm talking... 10-15 minutes for a page to load all its elements.

And from that point foward, the site worked the way it was meant to (that is, retarded, but at least each page loads).

So I'm guessing their https is hosted from some dude's dialup connection at home or something?

Whatever it is, I plan never to visit the damn thing again.

(plus, if they ever actually look at my account, they'll probably wonder why my super secret questions are the actually just the same question five times over - WIN)