shave ice & gelato

Years ago, this was what you would see at the end of an Italian movie:
(pronounced [fee-ney])

FINE -- The End -- the end of March Madness blogging for 31 days straight! Yay!

and...

FINE -- The End -- the end of my frustrating (to put it nicely) saga of trying to upgrade to MLB.TV! Yay!

So here's the update: I called MLB again this morning. I only had 10 minutes but of course I ended up on the phone for 20 minutes and arrived at work with 1 minute to spare!

It was pretty obvious that I was probably not going to get much farther calling the technical difficulty department again. This was the department that sent my problem as a priority up to corporate five days ago. Corporate either decided to ignore my problem, decided it was not worth responding to, or they just didn't give a rip.

This morning, I instead pressed #1 to talk to the billing department again (the department I spoke to the first two times). When my call was answered, before even allowing the person to get a chance to ask what the problem was, I insisted on speaking to a supervisor immediately, mentioning that this was now my 6th phone call to MLB. The person must have understood right away that I was not in the mood to go over everything with her first.

Ray, a supervisor, got on the phone and got the picture immediately just how upset and fed up I was. He started to say something about putting me on hold while he researched my problem but I stopped him right away and told him that I would save him the time by informing him of what had transpired so far myself so I would not have to wait for him to read everything noted in my account before he could help me resolve the problem. I also made sure he was aware of how much of a hassle it was to have to call before leaving for work and that I had very little time to spend on the phone this morning.

Once he understood the history of the problem and the lack of help from MLB so far, I told him that I needed him to either fix the problem today or figure out a way for me to sign up for the regular MLB.TV subscription and then credit me the difference so that I would only be charged $79.95 as returning customer instead of $99.95.

He told me that he understood my frustration (although this was the same thing I was tole from everyone else I had spoken to so far). He then said that he would have someone work on the issue immediately and within an hour I should receive either a reply by phone or by email with progress on what was happening. I thanked him and left for work.

Things were crazy when I arrived at work. Once I got settled, I checked my email (since it had been a little more than an hour). Nothing so far. About 30 minutes later the phone rang. It was MLB! Fortunately it was center time in my class, so it was not a big problem to take the call. I was surprised that MLB had my work phone number after changing my phone number in my account from my work to my home phone number so I would be able to get a call back from corporate (the call that never came). I am guessing it was somewhere in the notes of my account.

The guy on the phone told me that he needed my password to activate my subscription. I liked hearing that word activate! After I gave him my password and waited a minute, he said it was all set. That was it? That was what took 9 days? I certainly was not going to let him hang up until I made sure it worked for me. I asked him to please stay on the phone while I tried to get a game on my computer to make sure it was working on my end. He patiently waited while I went to the MLB website and clicked on a game. Finally!! It worked!!

I watched part of today's Red Sox game tonight (you can watch games later in the day if you are not able to watch them live). Great game. Two grand slams! Victor Martinez hit two home runs (one of the grand slams and another home run).

There is only one bit of bad news in all of this. I found out tonight while reading the FAQ that all ESPN Sunday Night Baseball games will be blacked out. That means that I will be tortured once again by having to listen to Joe Morgan... unless ESPN has finally decided to listen to please from baseball fans all over to replace Joe Morgan. I am not holding my breath.

Four more days until Opening Day! Another baseball season begins. Yay!