An ongoing complaint to mlb.tv

The support forums at mlb.tv are full of people complaining and demanding their money back. Mlb.tv owns baseball and every game played. They've got us by our short hairs. They provide the only way we can watch all the games live and they know it. Sure, they'd rather have a perfect product, so they don't have to listen to us complain constantly. However, they don't need to have a perfect product. They don't even need to have a good product and therefore, they don't. When it's working, it's awesome, but the majority of the time, it's flawed and disappointing. That means that you may have a to wait a few hours to watch the game or it may mean that the friends and family that have gathered to watch opening day, will be seeing a blank screen or maybe a game with no audio. Fantastic.

I feel the need to keep a journal of my complaints. Less than two weeks into the season and there are already too many complaints to keep straight in my head. So starting today, I'm writing them down.

Last night I had to work until the late innings of the game. I rushed home and fired up the player and started the game, but the DVR function didn't work and I couldn't rewind. I searched the forum and they said that yes, that was a problem and they were working on it. Great. So I waited for the archive. The archive came promptly at the end of the game, but the link didn't work. Nice. I tried again and again and again and again and again. Finally it worked and I got to watch the game. However it was now an hour and a half later and I was already getting tired. So I watched about half and planned to get up early for work to watch the rest during breakfast. Early is 5am mind you. Not cool.

I got up early and went directly to the game. I tried to rewind but the DVR function didn't work. I tried to jump to inning but no luck. I clicked around and tried to get it started again and eventually the window reloaded. It asked again for my username and password. I diligently entered it and was told I had logged in too many times and was now locked out. I checked the forums. Apparently you are supposed to log out every time you start a new game or restart the game that doesn't work. I emailed customer support. Previous emails have taken several days to receive a reply. I called customer service and spent 10 minutes pressing 2 before they told me that their offices were closed. Fantastic.

So, I've yet to see the game I paid to watch and now I'm at work and by the time I get home, it'll be time to watch the next game (mlb.tv willing). A baseball fan can't afford to get a game behind because of technical difficulties. But there is nothing I can do. If I cancel my services I can't watch any Sox games. I have to grin and bear and hope for the best. It's pretty freaking depressing.