Benefits by WEX

This app is dysfunctional to the point where it seems to be actively discouraging people from using it. Uploading a receipt to the receipt organizer? Sure! If you don’t mind watching a spinning wheel for at least 60 seconds. But don’t think “ok let me do something else for a couple minutes then come back when it’s done” because the app will automatically log you out after 2 minutes and you’ll have to start all over again. And then you’ll find out that “enable face id” does not, in fact, enable Face ID, as you’ll have to fish the password out of your password manager each and every time you open the app. And because that’s not annoying enough, the app doesn’t seem to have identify itself to apple’s password app so rather than seeing your “wex health” credentials suggested at the top of the password picker list, you’ll then need to explicitly search for “wex” in your password list. Every. Single. Time. You. Log. In. Combine all of the above with Wex’s seemingly standard business practice to require a receipt for every single swipe of the fsa card, even if it’s at a pharmacy or hospital, and it’s really hard not to be cynical about their entire business model. It’s so bad I’m considering unenrolling from my fsa plan all together.

This app is excruciating to use. When you launch it, it uses FaceID to login very quickly, which is great. Then it takes 5-6 seconds to load your accounts. Once loaded, before you can tap on your account, it takes a few seconds to show a modal telling you about the expense scanner. When you close the modal, you’d think you’re finally ready to go. But no… the app spends another 5-6 seconds reloading your account list, as if something could have changed in the amount of time the modal was on-screen. And this happens every single app load. There is no way to keep from being told about this stupid expense scanner that I don’t use. Finally, you can tap on your account and it spends another couple seconds loading before showing you the individual account screen. If you have the misfortune of needing to go back to the account list view… well, you guessed it! Another 5-6 seconds spent “Loading your accounts”. Devs… do your users (and your backend) a favor and implement a reasonable query cache on device. Nobody expects the app to do a full reload every single time you navigate screens. Financial data doesn’t change that often. And if someone does want to forcibly refresh, you can have a refresh button or implement pull-to-refresh.

This app has significant potential. I like being able to check my balance and upload receipts. But it doesn’t coordinate with my insurance and therefore the app doesn’t work as well as another I had in the past. It automatically asks me for receipts/aka EOBs whereas my old provider used to automatically reimburse me for obvious things like a copay at a Doctor’s office. Also I had a lab refund my FSA card as they should not have charged me. The customer service rep I called at Wex said they saw the credit and it should take 1-2 months to rectify it. That was four months ago so I’m missing out on submitting another item. I used the app to contact customer service via email and after I hit send instead of getting a confirmation that my question was sent - the app announced that it had “timed out for inactivity”. 2021 just won’t go away!