*facepalm*

[ermingarden]

You may have seen that the Biden administration's new website COVIDtests.gov has gone live a day ahead of schedule. The website is meant to allow Americans to order rapid at-home Covid tests for free through the U.S. Postal Service, limited to four tests per residential address.

I live in student housing, in an apartment building with hundreds of other people...and the website recognizes the street address of the whole building as one residential address, even though there is a field in the form to enter apartment unit numbers. So, since someone else in the building has already ordered the allotted four tests to their apartment, none of the rest of us can.

I really hope my building specifically has been misclassified rather than this being a widespread error affecting apartment buildings generally, because even though I'm sure it could be fixed, the optics on this would be extremely bad for the administration, especially when you consider the disparate impact based on socioeconomic status. (What type of building has the most people living at a single street address? Housing projects.) Add in the fact that the four-test-per-household cap already favors smaller households, which also tends to track with socioeconomic status....

(The website does have a banner at the top reading COVIDtests.gov is up and running early to help prepare for the full launch tomorrow. We have tests for every residential address in the U.S. Please check back tomorrow if you run into any unexpected issues – hopefully if there is a widespread issue they'll fix it swiftly.)

Edit: Evidently the apartment building problem is widespread, and there are multiple other issues cropping up as well. zdenka shared a link to a Twitter account (@MarkedByCovid) that is compiling observed problems and crowdsourced workarounds at this thread.

As of 9:15pm on 1/18, USPS has stated that the observed problems affect only “a small percentage of orders” (...really?) and recommended that customers file a service request here or contact the Postal Service help desk at 1-800-275-8777. (Source: NYTimes)

Comments

[ysilme]

This icon has never been more fitting.... good grief. This is problematic in so many regards... /o\
We can get free testing in test centres, pharmacies and such, and with many you just need to queue up (although not much fun in winter). At-home tests had been totally out of stock since mid OCTOBER but are sometimes available again. You can only get five per shop visit, but obviously some people are doing that on endless repeat to buy them out so quickly (like, store shows online over 600 pieces, you go there an hour later and they're gone - and the store doesn't have that amount of regular customers in that time.) But thanks to the free testing options it's not that bad.

[ermingarden]

Yeah, if it's not one thing it's another....

I've basically given up hope of getting at-home tests from a pharmacy, they never seem to have that in stock – but I'll keep a lookout, that'll hopefully change! We have pretty widely available free PCR testing as well, fortunately (at least where I am).

[zdenka]

Oh no. :( I hope they fix that. I live in an apartment building and I haven't tried ordering mine yet--I guess we'll see!

[zdenka]

What would you know--I was unable to place my order because it claimed someone had already used that address. :/ Putting the apartment number on the same line didn't help.

[ermingarden]

Oh noooooooo

[zdenka]

I just found multiple people on Twitter in different cities and states who have the same problem. On the bad side, that means many many people will have trouble accessing this service, and as you mentioned, it's going to have a disparate impact. People with lower/less stable incomes are going to be a higher proportion of renters / not own their own homes. On the bright side, sounds like the problem is big enough that there will be pressure to fix it?

Thanks for the heads up, btw! I might have just given up on the process if I thought it was just me.

[ermingarden]

Oof, thanks for letting me know! Hopefully it'll be fixed soon. And I'm glad my mentioning it was helpful to you!

What gets me is that not only did the website go live with a massive problem, it went live a day early – talk about an unforced error.

(Also, I love that icon – hilarious!)

[zdenka]

The more I poke around, the more I'm finding people with problems using the site. I really hope the issues can be fixed!

Glad you like the icon. :) It's appropriate to several of my canons, but this may be the first time I've used it for real life . . .

[independence1776]

Oh no. I hope it's fixed quickly.

[ermingarden]

Me too! Based on what zdenka has seen on Twitter, it looks like the problem is widespread.

What gets me is that not only did the website go live with a massive problem, it went live a day early – talk about an unforced error!

[independence1776]

I... My best guess is that it's only pulling from the required fields. Which is, uh, people clearly didn't do enough testing.

[erinptah]

Did you try putting the full "123 Street Name Apt 456" line in the Address 1 field, instead of moving the apartment number to Address 2?

Whenever I order something from a shop that validates addresses with the USPS database, that's the format it prompts me to use.

(It's also the format I used to order tests this afternoon, and it worked -- but maybe I'm just the first person in my building who ordered them, who knows.)

[ermingarden]

Yes, I tried both. Thank you for the advice, though!

I'm glad to hear it worked for you – hopefully either the issue was specific to my building or they've fixed the problem by now. (Edit: Tried again, still doesn't work.)

[erinptah]

Guess I did just get lucky, then! Here's hoping they push a fix out soon.

[rachelmanija]

This is also going to affect rural people. USPS doesn't deliver to my home address, only to a PO box. This is true for my entire town.

[ermingarden]

For this one, I have good news: My dad lives in a town that has no street addresses, and he and my stepmom were apparently able to order tests just fine. (No idea how they're preventing people from, say, ordering 4 to a street address and 4 more to a PO box for the same household, but...*shrug*)

[ermingarden]

...unless my dad and stepmom were the first people in the entire town to order tests to that post office, that is.

[zdenka]

This org on Twitter is compiling problems with the website and attempted solutions:

https://twitter.com/MarkedByCovid/status/1483534157665816578

[ermingarden]

Thank you!!!

[chestnut_pod]

A small percentage indeed! I am in the exact same predicament as you, as is, I assume, 90% of the graduate student population here, not to mention essentially everyone else living in group housing of one kind or another! Ridiculous.

[ermingarden]

I just can't believe such a huge problem would slip past them! I mean, I'm not sure what percentage of Americans live in buildings with multiple households, but it seems like it has to be half the country....

[elwendell]

Sounds about right for any government. What makes me smile is that they're introducing tests for a variant of the virus that is patently less deadly than earlier ones. It would make more sense if they just told everyone suffering from cold symptoms that tests are not necessary and just to stay home for five days.

[shirebound]

Oh no, what a tragic glitch! :(