1. Fill out the very first part of the application - just basic name and address - click "continue". Error page. WAT.
2. Notice they have an outline view of the application. Use that to get to get past the error page. Now it's asking for my "Certificate of Citizenship" number. WAT. No form I have ever filled out - tax returns, financial aid forms, employment forms, DMV forms - nothing has ever asked me for this. Spend a day searching for it.
3. Finally find the number, fill it in, click "continue". Error page. WAT.
4. Use the outline again to get to the income section. It lists me twice, as if there are two separate brikis98's in my household. It even asks me "how is brikis98 related to brikis98"? WAT.
5. Call to tech support #1. After 45 minutes of messing with the application, clearing cookies, logging out/in, we couldn't figure out how to remove the extra "me". There is no way to completely restart an application. Solution from tech support: sign up for a completely new account - new user name, password, etc - but don't enter your SSN too early or it'll detect the duplicate account. WAT.
6. Sign up for a new account. Start filling out the application from scratch. Error page. WAT.
7. Use the outline trick again. Go to income section. No duplicate "me" this time - yay! However, now it asks for "monthly income". I just left my job, so my monthly income is zero... but I obviously had a monthly income the first 5 months of this year. Call to tech support #2. They tell me to take all the money I've made this year, divide it by 12, and put that as a monthly income. WAT.
8. Finish filling out the application. Get to a page that has a button to "See Eligible Plans". Click the button. Error page. WAT. There is no outline view to get past this one.
9. Call to tech support #3. After half an hour more, the suggestion is to try another browser. I switch to Firefox. It tells me coveredca.com does not have a valid SSL cert. WAT.
10. Switch to Safari. No complaints about the cert. Log in, click the "See Eligible Plans" button. The page loads - yay! However, the UI is broken, with strange scrollbar-in-a-scrollbar setup that makes it very tough to browse the plans. Download PDFs of each one for easier reading.
After all that, I found that the plans were all way overpriced for the comically bad benefits they offered.