Headspace Care (Ginger)

They really just copy and paste responses and fill in the blank with what fits your situation.

coach copied and pasted paragraphs for me to read, and didn't even bother getting to know me or asking what I need in the first session. She also left the conversation without saying bye and letting me know the session has ended

The people working as coaches just ask a bunch of disjointed and seemingly copy-pasted questions whilst offering no real support.

the coaches seem to be robots copy and pasting responses and questions. It doesn't seem like they're actually personally listening or responding to anything you say, just pasting in canned questions

I was either talking to a bot or it was completely scripted. Nothing about the chat was personal. The "coach" came back with canned answers and completely useless support. I mentioned some very personal things that are bothering me and all I got back was along the lines of "I'm so sorry you feel that way. Maybe deep breathing would help?" No mention of anything specific

I spent over an hour of my life setting up the app. This session was worse than useless when I realized that there was no human on the other end

I responded to the latter by informing them I was at my job on a short break and would not be able to converse further, but that I was fine and safe. The coach's messages were incredibly default. They did not acknowledge any of what I had said and proceeded as if I hadn't said anything at all

I got an automated text. Waited 15 min and no one ever responded. If I was in a desperate situation that could have pushed me over the edge.

my coach wasn't helpful. She just responded with platitudes and then asked how she could help with my goals. Well…setting goals was the problem. I was responding to the check-in quizzes and saying I had moderate depression and thoughts of self harm and She never acknowledged this

Example I did my check in and had suicidal thoughts on the past two weeks. So it added a new coach who checked in with me. All they did was repeat the same question and the suicide hotline. Then simply asked to close the channel. I would have liked to talk about why I was feeling hopeless and overwhelmed but that didn't happen

I was in severe distress so I looked up my health care providers services and ginger was listed as a " 24/7 emotional support". I tried to talk to the "coach" who just ended up explaining to me that this was not the place for it. It was all either clearly template responses or chatgpt

I’ve been waiting for a week to receive my intake form to see a therapist.

I was ghosted by my coach. She didnt respond to me in the chat unless I prompted her, and didnt provide any actionable insight.

it's you voicing your issues and your coach replying back with exercises you can do on your own and articles you can read

The coaches do not discuss things in detail and only offer links to resources.

It is hard to imagine a worse experience. Responses take forever and are typically way off the mark from the conversation you thought you were having

my coach never provided advice; she merely replied with things like "what do you think you should do in this situation?"

the coach can't wait to get rid of you

There doesn't seem to be updates to the content, and a lot of it is dated--referring to working from home during the pandemic.

The content is short, shallow and unless you know nothing about psychology, you have you to sign up before you can even see any content

She wanted me to do a 5 minute zumba video during the workday despite my telling her my office is not private and has no floor space, and that I am biking to work most days.I suggested takind a brief walk afew tineca week during the workday, which felt manageable to me. Then she pushed me to journal, call a friend d…

This app is not for therapy… They want to create an action plan to help you on your goals. I came in knowing very specifically what I need help and support with and quickly realized that is not the aim here.

you can't send a message to your provider directly, the wait times are long, and they lack cultural responsiveness to lgbtq issues

In my most vulnerable moments he laughed at me, told me I was to blame for being assaulted, & graphically explained what would happen to me next If I didn't "stop partying." To top it all off it has been 4 months since the incident & I have reached out to this company through 3 email addresses, member support, & 2 coaches. I am yet to receive an answer

There is no rotation support on the iPad app. This means that if you put your iPad on any folio case that Apple and 3rd Party manufacturers have made for the last decade, you'll have a terrible experience, because all of them prop the iPad up in Landscape Orientation, and this app is stubbornly locked to Portrait Orientation

I don't understand why some apps do not allow landscape mode. Whenever I chat with my coach on my iPad with a keyboard, I have to tilt my head to read the text

1) The sessions are only via text but both the iPhone and IPad app are only in portrait orientation.

The iPhone app is reliable, but text-based coaching during a weekly 30-60 minute session would benefit hugely from a physical keyboard, which also requires a website login.

PLEASE support screen rotation! I need to use it on iPad with keyboard.

I have stopped using this app altogether since it will not rotate in the landscape direction.

it is entirely text-based - there's no way to talk over the phone or in person. Sessions are limited to 30 min which goes by in a flash

You can't communicate emotions through text, what about facial expressions and tone of voice

it's hard to be consistent & create accountability when you cant build a real relationship with a coach by speaking with them like on video chat rather than just texting

The text function can be glacially slow. I find myself just staring at the screen waiting for a response and the impatience doesn't help me feel better

Coaches communication is chat only, with fairly long wait times. Therapy sessions are impossible to schedule and take weeks to even start…

You start out with just text appointments which didn't help me at all with what I needed therapy wise

support team seems understaffed, and if you need support right away, the app is prone to bugs and schedule-availability errors

I only use the app to meet with a psychiatrist every couple months, and it’s annoying there is no desktop site where I can access my Zoom links.

until they implement day of notifications it won't work for me. I constantly miss appts because they refuse to remind you of your appt the day of

It is hard to remember appointments and also is sometimes just hard to reach out. A notification would be great!

I don't need every time answer for stupid question. I need just one meditation but it is every times quest

The Ginger app uses an embedded version of Zoom, but by doing it this way it doesn't keep your screen active and timeouts occur when you've on live therapy sessions

However, I do get regular push notifications asking me to fill out surveys about my mood and asking for repeated assessments of my therapist. I feel like an over-surveyed customer who is not getting much actual therapy.

I had a brief moment during a therapy session when it appeared that someone else was with the therapist but off camera.

Ginger could not determine my eligibility then said it had an engineering problem then said I could get some coaching then kept asking formoney then they said I didn't need to pay just contact the coach but the coach said I have an insurance issue

I was told by my coach I was covered by my insurance for therapy and psychiatric meetings. This was a lie. Coverage means I'm allowed to pay for the sessions, not that my insurance covers them

I switched jobs and had a change of insurance and everything that could go wrong with their system processing the change did. Despite my checking and rechecking and doing everything possible to prevent any mishaps. TWO months into new sessions I now get an email about how 'they can't find my new insurance on file.' I did not want to resume sessions without ensuring everything was covered by current insurance first! I said this repeatedly!

keep trying to get my credit card without letting me know how much I would be billed… I tried to make use of the free coaches and the first coach ignored me and signed off when we were supposed to have our scheduled meeting time

Since Ginger became Headspace Care a couple of years ago, I’ve had nonstop issues with this app randomly stopping my care eligibility or losing my insurance information.

I started that process before my old insurance ran out but ran into a problem in doing this in the app or via the website. I got in touch with support right away. Support identified a bug. My insurance ran out, my subscription was canceled, my next appt was canceled and I am left abandoned.

However, if they decided not to treat me because I was too unwell and needed more adept care, why did they not notify until I requested over and over answers. Imagine if I was someone in an actual suicidal depressive state and instead notifying me that I would not be a good fit for your services, or even pointing me in the right direction so I could get help asap, I just waited for a therapist they weren't even looking

because I had past depressive episodes in my adolescents that involve self harm, which I had expressed was not a current issue I was effectively blacklisted from future therapy in this app. And I was not notified until I kept bugging admin about finding a possible different therapist

my coach let me know that I would be blocked from using the app, and that the Ginger clinical team had deemed me not eligible to use their text based coaching. There was no explanation provided

I never received the email to verify my account and when I emailed customer support for help with this I never received a response. I emailed them twice. It has been almost over a month.

I still haven't been able to schedule ny first appointment. So glitchy.

It won't complete anything I start (just buffers or stays on the last page and won't continue)

Hard to connect entered my info more tha 3 times.. still not connected.

sporadically won't let me login and gets stuck in a loop of verifying and saying I already have an account

I have this through my employer and they keep booking me for coaching sessions I am not attending.

They started scheduling a bunch of appointments that I did not make and will not let me shut down the subscription.

Heard good things about ginger, went to set up and account and found I have to be 18 or older to make an account and receive therapy.

every time we put my birthday in, it said you're too young, get a parent when my dad had done whatever he needed to do

Can't add dependents through the app. Have been told for 3 weeks engineering department is working on it and still can't add

App keeps rebooting and then doing the spinny wheel and then telling me to go to headspace app for care and then it's not there so now I'm a pro and know to reboot the care app and go through the process a billion times.

Headspace care tells me to log in to headspace. Headspace wont let me join my session and says i need to sign up through my insurance that i already did.

Scheduled a therapy session only to be forced to the headspace app and then never load.

You don't find that out until the Delete Account page. we are not responsible for data leaks that occur when handling your HIPAA

that person is not a licensed therapist but essentially a life coach. They also were unwilling to delete my data when requested

Logging in with Headspace credentials doesn't work.

although it says it's available for Kaiser Permanente members, my provider says he doesn't have authority to approve the use of this app because it's considered outside service

But $125 cancellation fee if you have to cancel or reschedule within TWO DAYS of an appointment is truly ridiculous, especially when it’s a virtual appointment and was booked less than two days in advance.

This company is charging me $125 for rescheduling an appointment due to the fact that I woke up with a migraine so bad I couldn’t function that day.

I didn't get in-app notification for an appointment so I missed the appointment and they're charging me $125.00. I tried to ask their member support to waive it just this one time and they denied this

I rescheduled 24 hours before hand. It did not go too into detail about the charge I would accrue by rescheduling, so I went ahead and did it

There are absolutely no exceptions to their 48-hour cancellation policy, regardless of the nature of any emergency preventing you from attending a care appointment.

I also had to cancel an appointment and did so like the policy stated within 48 hours in advance and I am still being charged a $125 fee which is a ridiculous high amount for a cancellation fee.

I got a bill for over 1k after a year of services and was not billed in real time.

Billing system is atrocious. They will take over 8 months to bill you for claims and then bill you for every claim for the full year all at once and expect to paid in 2 days.

It's been over a year since I quit their service, but they still keep over-billing me for a co-pay that I already paid through Cigna InstaMed.

I cancelled this service a YEAR ago and they just charged me 40.00. And then they just took 40.00 from my bank account!

HOWEVER, I left and then 5 months later I got charged multiple times for previous therapy sessions for copays. Before you have a therapy session, they should tell you if you have copays or not. Not randomly bill you all at once with no warning 5 months later.

Fast forward to 3 weeks ago, and they're notifying me of charges for things that supposedly happened in NOVEMBER and JANUARY. I've asked repeatedly for explanations and offered screenshots to prove I did nothing to merit that, but they WILL NOT EXPLAIN and of course you can't speak with a human by phone or even chat

One session was $145. Really??? And the first session was intake. Some reason the insurance doesn't cover the cost of the sessions only the coaching on the app I believe

Ginger emailed me through the app and asked me if I wanted to proceed, that it was in network and covered by my insurance. Great! Until I was getting charged full price for all my sessions. I contacted my insurance company and it took forever to figure out that BSCA only covers the life coach, not any of the therapy…

And they billed my insurance $230 but Solera denied being affiliated with Ginger. Their "support" is texting with a life coach. Oh and they billed my insurance $230 but Solera denied being affiliated with Ginger. And real therapy isn't available which they didn't tell me until after they got paid

My therapist canceled her appointment with me (less than 24 hours in advance), yet still filed the claim through my insurance. I was told I would not get hit with the $50 monthly coaching fee as long as I was enrolled in therapy, yet now I'm dealing with fighting with that charge too

For your $40 per month subscription, you only get text messages. If you want to speak to an actual person, you will pay your normal insurance co-pay.

I was not covered to be seeing Ginger App's therapist and psychiatrist

They have you fill out a bunch of personal info and ask a bunch of personal questions then tell you if you want help from them you need to give credit card info.

take it as a red flag when you can't even see anything about the app until you put in card information

Ginger asks for private health info and CC and refused to give a price.

However , ginger is never upfront with how much the app costs per month or how much you will pay for every therapist session.

they force you to put your credit card info on the ap. I choose not to keep any credit card info where it could be accessible by phone

After an initial 12 minute consult they want to charge me $100 for a month.

The “coach” is AI and when you try to delete or deactivate your account they will not let you.

I literally been trying to cancel my membership for months now and these people never do they are scammers and keep trying to charge my card

I paid for nothing and can't use what I paid for

With nice lexical tricks, you're selling your app and capitalize on people's emotions. You can only put your card information if you want to buy another month of subscription

I had unsuccessful therapy session that made me feel worse 5 days after downloading the app, and spent weeks trying to cancel without success. I had to reach out 3 different ways to get the account cancelled and was still charged $50 plus insurance payments for an app I repeatedly tried to cancel right away.

They can't afford the same courtesy to their clients, who are there looking for support and need reliability in such support

I had a coaching and a psychiatric appointment canceled without any advance notice. I'm expected to give notice of cancelations

My therapist canceled her appointment with me (less than 24 hours in advance), yet still filed the claim through my insurance. I was told I would not get hit with the $50 monthly coaching fee as long as I was enrolled in therapy, yet now I'm dealing with fighting with that charge too

With less than 24 hours to go before my intake appointment, I received a message that my appointment had been canceled, because the therapist was no longer with the company

I figured I'd use the services for this month since I was already billed for it and there's no refunds. I ask my coach if we can schedule a meeting and she said no because I cancelled the services. So I paid for nothing and can't use what I paid for

I scheduled a 1-hour appointment. They took between 10 and 30 minutes to answer within that hour. When I ask for the cancellation of my membership and my money back, they said they could accomodate my request, but then they took that back

Got a $130 charge today for a subscription I NEVER agreed to, as originally I was trying this out for free and decided not to move forward.

They do not offer automatic bill pay and as someone with ADHD it is very difficult to remember. However! If you miss any appointment made with a therapist they are more than happy to automatically bill you for the missed appointment.

They took a day to respond and said "due to an increase in demand they are unable to offer therapy sessions" then they billed my insurance company 230 dollars

Even after paying their system emails me 5 times a day for missing credit card info.

Told me I would have to wait over two months just to see a tele health therapist even though I am in crises. After I talked with them and explained the severity of my situation, they told me there was nothing they can do.

I've been trying to book an appt for close to a month. Support has been atrocious. They offer a time, I say yes immediately- 24 hrs later I get a note that the slots are full

Not very user friendly , not enough resources and the member support team is terrible, it is hard and frustrating to schedule an appointment when member support team consistently replies hours later or day later.

I have been with the app for weeks and I still haven't even had a chat with a coach

The only way to do anything is to chat with member services and they are a massive bottleneck. The agents don't read any of the previous messages and you're lucky to get a response once a day, which means you're stuck in an very slow loop

The app was never able to get me an appointment with a therapist even after their IT team was contacted. I tried for months with no success.

I made an appointment to have a chat with a coach because they won’t give you therapy until you have a coaching session but then I was made to wait for five minutes of the 30 minutes total just to get a response and then five minutes into the conversation, I was switched over to a specialist coach who told me I woul…

Not only does the app have long connect times to re-enter active sessions, sometimes the coaches are sending 5 word responses every 20-30 mins….

A 45 minute session on this app could be done in a 2 minute real-time conversation. It seems like the coaches have too many customers each week which makes it hard to remember what was talked about, and they need to multitask and talk to many people at once.

I'm currently in my first coaching session and I've been waiting 15 minutes for a response after "How are you doing today?" Not really all that useful for a 30 minute scheduled session.

I could tell by the lengthy pauses between answers that the coach was working with multiple people at the same time. This also caused her to answer questions or asked questions of me that had nothing to do with the response I just provided. She admitted that she was working with multiple people.

Councilor takes like 5 mins to respond to each text. I believe they are online with multiple subscribers at once so takes a long time to respond to every text during a “session”.

I joined about ten minutes early, introduced myself and waited… waited my whole appointment and never heard from anyone.

the Ginger coach (which could have been a bot or AI) regurgitated irrelevant information that seemed standardized. In a 30-minute session, the coach was not responsive for 20 minutes of it

they assigned me to a coach who was about to go offline in 3 minutes and then I HAD to message support.

I scheduled my initial 30-60 minute intake appointment 5 days in advance only to have my assigned "coach" show up and abruptly/brusquely tell me she didn't have time for me

the coach I was assigned did not show up to the first appointment due to the app scheduling a session during a time when she was not available. Then I finally got set up with a video therapy appointment, and the therapist was not only late to the session, but abandoned the appointment without letting me know, because their audio wasn't working

The coach I was assigned was slightly late for our first scheduled meeting a few weeks ago, nearly 10 minutes late for our 30 minute meeting the next week and then just didn't even show up

if you need to change providers you have to go back and forth through email and can't browse providers and research yourself

When I tried to get a real therapist, I had to go through member support. It's another chat channel, but they don't respond for hours- or sometimes days. They don't let you know anything about the therapist they're assigning you other than first name and last initial. I said I didn't want to work with a man, they assigned me a man. They offered another person, o said yes right away, they didn't check their messages for a day and the appointment was gone

You are not able to schedule appointments with providers on your own. It's done through a member support chat that doesn't reply and is multiple people, who do not read the previous messages

the app gives you no information on your therapist and no way to see what they specialize in. If I can't even find any information on the therapist, who I am supposed to confide in, you would think I would be matched with an appropriate therapist

it took me upwards of 4 months to get an appointment. Once I finally did I was set up with a marriage counselor. I wish I would've known these were his credentials before I told him my life story & paid him? The app gives you no information on your therapist and no way to see what they specialize in

App puts barriers in the way of accessing care, doesn't let you select your own provider, adds stress and anxiety overall

I had a first appointment scheduled two weeks out, then literally 5 minutes before, I get an automated email saying my appointment was canceled with no reason at all. I go to the app and there was no alert or anything. The appointment just disappeared.

If the constant cancellations weren't enough, they give me the same copy and paste apology every single time. It takes months to actually book an appointment, and by the time the appointment comes, it gets cancelled last minute

First sessions would be scheduled months in the future and the therapist assigned to my Care Team canceled half the sessions and the ghosted me after saying they would provide me references for new therapists.

Therapist appointments are only available months out. And when you try to connect with the therapist on zoom for your appointment they never show up.

I have waited 3 separate times in scheduled meetings for a therapist. After waiting 30 minutes for them every time, they never would come!!! This is insanely frustrating and unprofessional.

They offer a time, I say yes immediately- 24 hrs later I get a note that the slots are full.

It's been almost a week that I'm trying to get support to help me with an issue registering. I've sent the response to the automatic email, and again asked them on a 3rd email to follow up and no answer

I never received the email to verify my account and when I emailed customer support for help with this I never received a response. I emailed them twice. It has been almost over a month.

I submitted multiple help requests and have waited over a month for someone to assist me, with no success as of yet.

You cannot speak to anyone on their phone line, and headspace communications via email work great to remind you that you are being billed $125.00 dollars randomly.

It takes days for the support team to reply, the coaches ignore video chat requests and check in/reply with AI generated messages.

The only way to do anything is to chat with member services and they are a massive bottleneck. The agents don't read any of the previous messages and you're lucky to get a response once a day, which means you're stuck in an very slow loop

Each time disappointing and realized why I cancelled after they took my money.

After pouring out my heart to Coach Jazz, she promised a regular coach would be contacting me within a few days. Over a month went by and that did not happen.

Seems like week after week I'm reminding the coach what I want to focus on, it's like they don't really know me and I spend time going back and forth just catching them up—might as well get a new coach every week

Coach would cancel on me every time and couldn't change her

There was a constant change in support providers. Just about the time we'd get to a working place something would happen. A new provider was always offered but it meant starting over and approaching the goal as that provider saw fit

I have been through three therapists at this point. They keep leaving the platform. It hasn't really been successful for my mental health because it takes me some time to open up and right when I think I'm getting somewhere I have to start over

I signed up and scheduled a text session because it doesn't give you an option to schedule a phone or video call. Then redirects you to download their app where guess what, my previously scheduled appointment was nowhere to be found!

we exchanged maybe 4-5 messages in 30 mins. What's the point of setting up a schedule if you won't be responsive?

For instance, there is no Appointments tab or anything like that. There is no way to connect to the therapist directly, even to confirm an appointment. I cannot log on to a website, only access my info through the app. I just can't seem to find useful information about the care I'm receiving

Things were working out, but suddenly after scheduling appointments with my therapist and psychologist, the appointments disappeared from my calendar. I need a refill on a prescription, but have not been able to get a hold of support in over a month.

I'm never able to connect with a therapist. It shows that they are online and during their working hours but don't respond. I asked to be reassigned to a new therapist but that never happened

support team seems understaffed, and if you need support right away, the app is prone to bugs and schedule-availability errors

Now I can't even make a new appointment or contact any real support

Finally got a therapist and it didn't let me log on. Session was cancelled and there's no way dor me to contact them!!!

To schedule care, the app puts you through to an AI chatbot and a human follows up via email 24-48 hours later.

You can no longer just talk to a person to schedule an appointment with your therapist. It puts you through a useless chat bot that just tells you that someone will be emailing you.

Example - if you need to reschedule an appointment they refer you to the chat support. When you ask the chat support to reschedule the appointment, it simply replies with information about when your current appointment is.

As someone who has had multiple years of experience in therapy due to many traumas, I will say this was one of the worst of communication techniques as you cannot reach out to your therapist in any way and the system is designed to charge you immediately even if a work crisis arises if you miss one session.

if I need to reschedule, I'm directed to member support. They take HOURS to respond, and rescheduling is super inconvenient

I had an appointment with a couch today and was told when I logged on that the care was not available.

It's very difficult to schedule a therapy appointment, as their app is glitchy. I have to wait for their member support team to manually schedule my appointments, which they take 1-2 business days for them to reply only 1 time. My therapy appointments have been canceled 2 times. I find out that my appointment gets canceled after waiting 15 minutes for the therapist to show up. I get no notification that the therapist has canceled

They offer a time, I say yes immediately- 24 hrs later I get a note that the slots are full.

I got an automated text. Waited 15 min and no one ever responded. If I was in a desperate situation that could have pushed me over the edge.

They gatekeep access to any meaningful mental health care, and make you speak to "coaches," who are glorified receptionists and do nothing. Accessing an actual licensed mental health provider was virtually impossible.

Halfway into my second session, my therapist revealed to me that she is not a therapist, and that this app is not therapy

Everything I read about this app said that it could connect you to psychiatrists. But they cannot prescribe medications through this service

The text-based coaching is a joke. It's unhelpful and just plain uninteresting. Meanwhile their billing department just spams messages to me about owing them money

Not to mention that the coaching service is less helpful than an AI and their little articles/guides are full of meaningless platitudes.

The counselors are never online. Therapy is blah, not very personable. And if you need anything more than a therapist for a diagnosis…forget it! You'll be lucky if your insurance covers the therapist. After about two months of waiting for a resolution from my doctor and the insurance because the claim was not sent correctly

The "lead coach" spends 2-3 sessions explaining what coaching is, the difference of coaching and therapy, spending 5 minutes to text you "Is this a good fit for what you need?" and then saying they will be out of town so I can book a month later

perhaps all those ginger layoffs were a poor choice? My employed switched to headspace care from another virtual service and the quality could not be more different and not in a good way.

I added it and have scheduled 2 appointments that have promptly had no one show up for the first appointment. And now they have removed my second scheduled appointment person from my care team.

when I first started using Ginger I wasn't paired with a coach that was a good match for me. Then, I requested a new coach and was matched with someone who was perfect

Some coaches are better than others. Keep trying until you find the right one for you

There are so many barriers to accessing good care including that you have to schedule a coaching session first even if you just want therapy, you get no real choice or options in provider, you can’t send a message to your provider directly, the wait times are long, and they lack cultural responsiveness to lgbtq issues.

that person is not a licensed therapist but essentially a life coach. They also were unwilling to delete my data when requested

Prescribed me a powerful Rx that can cause withdrawal symptoms a week before kicking me off the app.