My girlfriend switched health insurance companies last week. Everything can be taken care of online, most insurance companies in The Netherlands have elaborate customer portals.

When applying, we encountered a nice 'functional loop'.

We used an online form to apply for the insurance. You just fill out a form, click submit, and off you go. The insurance company has to go through a process to accept your application, so it might take a while before you actually have the insurance. We got a confirmation email which contained a 'status code'. In the mail it said we could use this code to track the status of the application. All we had to do was click a link and enter the status code.

So far so good. After a day we tried to check the status. What surprised us: to enter your status code, you need to enter your customer number. To get a customer number however, you need to be insured. Hmm. Funny. So once the insurance will be accepted, we get a customer number, which we can use to enter our status code, to see if the insurance was accepted. Interesting loop.

Unable to actually check the status, I called their helpdesk. Told the guy about the loop, which I might have skipped because he had no clue what I was talking about; told him the status confirmation code and then the guy said something funny:

"It's Saturday today so I cannot verify your status code. If however you give me your zipcode and name, I can check your status."

I'm not making this up. These guys actually have a software system that apparently hides the status code search field for them when it's Saturday? What GUI principle is behind that? "Oh, it's weekend, present less options"?

No wonder insurance rates are this high.