HeadwayReviews of headway.co

I loved the concept of Headway but sadly I cannot recommend them based on their sneaky tactics for adding payments to your account and charging you for items you don’t want. The set up their site so you are forced to hit continue(no other option provided) without knowing each time you hit continue your being charged additional fees. They then refuse to give refunds for items you don’t even want or will use! Stay clear !!

I would leave NEGATIVE stars if I could. Here is my experience: I had 12 sessions in 2024 with a therapist through Headway. My therapist has been lovely but the service she used for billing (Headway) has been the most terrible organization I have ever dealt with. For each of these appointments, they charged me $118.68. They stated that since my deductible had not been reached I would be charged the full amount on the credit card they had on file for me. But even after I reached my deductible, they continued to charge my card the full amount so I decided to do some digging and look into all of my health insurance claims. I then discovered that not a single claim had been submitted with my insurance for any of the sessions Headway had charged me for. On top of that, my deductible had fully been met by other providers I had seen. Headway charged me a total of $1395.24 for 12 sessions. This amount is well beyond any deductible I had. They should have only been charging me a 20% coinsurance for all of these appointments. At $23.74 a session my total amount due for 12 sessions would be $284.88. Headway overcharged me over $1,100.00. Headway has yet to submit a single claim to my insurance company (CareFirst Administrators) for any of these sessions dating back to Feb 21st 2024. It has been over 5 months and Headway has done nothing. Thankfully, my therapist was able to switch to a different billing provider so I could continue to have appointments with her. I have tried reaching out to Headway in numerous ways but there's no phone, no email, no chat on their website. I would open help tickets and they would provide vague, gaslighting answers and then close the ticket. None of my tickets have been resolved but Headway closed them on their end. My therapist and I reached out to their help emails without any response. Headway actively made it extremely difficult for me or my therapist to get in contact with them. We finally were able to get on an email with Jackie Levin who is on the Provider Success Team at Headway. I also had an agent named Keena and another named Jaimie who I corresponded with over email. They claimed Headway had submitted claims but my insurance was the one delaying the process because they had not processed it. They blamed CareFirst and stated they were the reason my claims were not correctly reflected in their system. I called CareFirst daily and they verified that nothing had been submitted by Headway. Headway then pivoted and claimed they fixed the issue and resubmitted all my claims. I was told by several Headway agents that my issue was resolved, and they closed the help tickets I opened on their website. My insurance has even offered to talk to Headway directly, but Headway refuses to provide any direct contact numbers. Agents from my insurance company have tried to reach out via phone and email to Headway and they haven’t received a response. They have refused to refund me at this point. They say they will refund me once my insurance processes their claim. But since they have not submitted anything my insurance cannot process anything. Headway is running a huge scam at the expense of everyday people. This is theft. It is illegal to bill a client weekly for months and never submit a single claim for the sessions billed. As an in-network provider, you are required in contract to submit the claims for processing. I will never use Headway again and have asked my therapist to tell her colleagues not to use Headway. Headway clearly has serious issues. There are hundreds of BBB and Trustpilot complaints about their service. They are a third-party vendor whose job it is to check insurance and instead, they are taking part in unlawful insurance activity. Five months later and I still have no idea when Headway will refund the approximately $1,100 they wrongly took from me. Update July 30th: Headway reached out this morning claiming that the only reason why claims did not show up was because my provider is not credentialled with CareFirst. This claim makes ZERO sense and is a LIE because my provider and I opted for another third-party billing company and their claims are coming through perfectly fine on the CareFirst Portal. To anyone looking for help, reaching out via their contact form is a complete waste of time. I have opened SEVERAL help tickets this way since May and Headway agents closed my tickets without any resolution being reached. Write a review here and file a claim with the Better Business Bureau.

To make things short, they allowed an unlicensed individual to pose as a reputable counselor. In this process, I was scammed out of $75 for a cancelation fee when I was present on the very first session with proof. After doing my own researching and providing their customer service with the hard proof that the individual scammed me and that they were not actually licensed, I was informed there would be an investigation. An hour later their team informed me that they will side with the unlicensed provider and that there is nothing they will do about my situation. During this “investigation” no one followed up with me with questions or concerns. I am not worried about the money, my concern is that this happens again to someone who is on the edge and is seeking professional help who could potentially harm themselves or someone else! If there is another option for you outside of headway I recommend researching that company instead, as headway has also been in legal trouble this past year. Do not link your card or payment method until you have met the provider.

On 6/17 I sought out therapy for behavioral health with a provider that uses Headway. The provider inquired Headway to figure out what the costs per session would be and forwarded Headway's response to me. A Headway Customer Experience Team member stated "Based on the details we have today for **** plan, they will have a $50 copay per session and their insurance will cover the remaining session fees, regardless of provider type, treatment, or duration. As always, you will be paid in accordance with the information listed on your rates and agreements page." I did one session with the provider on 7/1, believing that it would cost me $50. However, on 7/4 my insurance website claims that I owe $141.41, which is more than what Headway claimed I would be charged. On 7/8, Headway emailed me saying I owed them an extra $91.41 for this one session. Headway is not transparent and very misleading with the cost of health care. Headway also does not provide any customer support in the form of phone calls.

Awful experience as a patient. Locked me out of my account. When I requested a password reset, it told me to call my therapist. Therapist was unable to help. Tried contacting customer support but they require a login to reach them, and they hide all of their contact information. Tried clicking "can't access my account" but then it spun me around in circles and required me to read way too much information that didn't even help in the end. Overall I had to spend 45 minutes of my life unsuccessfully attempting to do something as simple as cancel a session, which should have taken 2 minutes tops. In addition, email alerts provide no direct links to useful information like canceling or rescheduling. I feel like I need more therapy just to deal with the frustrations of this poorly thought out portal!

I had an experience with Headway that I found disturbing, both from the therapist’s behavior and the company’s response to it. I booked an appointment with a therapist, and prior to the session I filled out both paperwork from Headway and really extensive background paperwork from the therapist herself. I was very honest about the things that were going on in my life and how much I was struggling with depression. In our session, I flat out told the therapist I was concerned about my depression and that I was having dark thoughts and that this was not normal for me. I thought the appointment I booked was a full hour-long appointment, since that’s what was indicated, but after about 25 minutes of talking the therapist said “these things don’t usually take this long,” and I was honestly confused by what she meant and then she said the consultation call is usually only 15 minutes. I was caught off guard since I didn’t know it was meant to be a quick intake call and not an actual session, since that hadn’t been explained to me. It felt abrupt for me, especially given the things I’d just said about having dark thoughts, and I was surprised she’d cut it short. So basically the session ended and I said I’d set up another one. A couple days later, the therapist called me when I was at work. At first I didn’t realize who it was and I apologized and said I wasn’t expecting her call. She didn’t ask if it was a good time for me to talk – it wasn’t, I was surrounded by my coworkers, and in general I’d rather not unexpectedly have a therapist call me to talk about therapy during the workday. She asked about setting up my next appointment, and I said I wasn’t in front of my calendar and that I’d book it through Headway later. She told me that she only uses Headway for billing and instead to use her direct calendar link for booking instead. I wasn’t nuts about this because part of why I wanted to use Headway was the ease of booking and having everything done through their platform. She also sent me an email instructing me to do my insurance through Alma instead (a Headway competitor). We ended the call with me saying I’d book my appointment later on when I got home. The next morning, I received an email from the therapist saying she was dropping me as a client because she hadn’t been able to establish a connection with me and it was becoming challenging for her…..it had been 5 days since our initial meeting. That was it. I had done all the requested paperwork, I was very open and honest in our first intake session, I had answered her unplanned call, yet somehow she decided I wasn’t doing enough to prove I was serious about therapy. I found it to be really unprofessional, inappropriate, and honestly concerning behavior for a therapist to drop a new patient like that, especially one who had just openly told them about having suicidal thoughts. It takes a lot for some people to reach out and openly share what they’re struggling with, and I don’t think it’s crazy that someone might take more than a few days to book their next appointment. I don’t think that proves they aren’t serious about therapy. I’ve also honestly never heard of a therapist dumping someone like that. If I had been in a darker place, I could see how this might have really made my depression worse. I found the whole thing really upsetting. I reached out and asked Headway to refund the session, both because it was never a full session to begin with, and because it had been a waste of my time since now she wouldn’t see me as a patient. I said I was open to seeing someone else on Headway still. They refused and said I’d been billed correctly and they sided with the therapist in the dispute. I also told them about how the therapist had tried to push me out of using Headway and into other platforms instead, as well as my concerns about her treatment of me in general, and Headway didn’t acknowledge either of those concerns and showed very little sympathy or concern about the situation. They just said they “understood that this situation has been frustrating for you.” It all just felt like template responses and nothing genuine. I also wasn't able to speak to anyone on the phone about this, which might have helped. It all had to happen slowly over email. I think when mental health is involved, you should be able to actually speak to someone directly. This woman is still a therapist listed on their platform, months later. I hope for anyone else who sees her that their mental health concerns are not dismissed, and I hope Headway would start taking patient feedback more seriously.

As a patient I love my therapist. I’m not sure of the exact business relationship between her and Headway, but Headway handles the billing. My therapist is in-network, as verified by Headway. Six months into this calendar year I discovered that Headway has not been submitting claims to my insurance and is charging me “full price.” They told me that they are waiting for some kind of system update by my insurance company, but reps from my insurance company say all systems are up to date. Because Headway has not submitted my claims, my insurance company has no record of the payments I have made. These payments put me beyond my deductible, so my insurance should be paying for my medical procedures. But because Headway is sitting on six months of claims, I’m still having to pay. I have explained this to Headway and demanded they file the claims, but they refused. They say they will do it after my insurance company verifies they have “updated their system.” My insurance company has tried to contact Headway on my behalf, but Headway does not have a phone number! Needless to say, this has been very frustrating. *Update: Headway’s response below is to repeat what I have been doing, i.e. contact them via their online support. This is how I know they are refusing to submit my claims. To be clear, I’ve already done what they suggested below. Now what?

Headway has predatory business practices and overcharges consistently for services. Headway will not correct their mistakes or honor contracts with insurance providers until formal grievances are filed. I’m “unsatisfied” (to say the least) because I have tried get errors corrected on my account. Headway verified in January that I have NO DEDUCTIBLE for telehealth visits but still held a deductible amount AND charged over 5 times the contract copay amount routinely. Refunds were only processed once insurance got involved in a formal grievance process. I have no complaints about my provider per se, except that they use Headway. Headway is predatory because if you want to continue to see your provider, you have to have a credit card on file, you are at their mercy, and they know that. Good luck.