shave ice & gelato

Opening Day for baseball is just one week away! Can you believe it? Well, I guess if you are not a baseball fan, you probably could care less. As for me, I cannot wait! Oh how I love the beginning of a new baseball season. Now if only I can get my new MLB.TV subscription to work.

For the past two seasons, I have subscribed to Gameday Audio (the live radio feed for baseball games). I have not subscribed to MLB.TV in the past because of the limited number of games I would be able to watch during a season to make it worth the cost. Most of the games are played while I am still working for at least four months of the baseball season. Games usually start at 1:05 pm here in Hawaii due to the time difference. Although I can often listen to part of a game while doing paperwork after the kids go home, it is more difficult to get work done while watching a game. During my summer break the past two years, I have been in Italy during part of the summer, again limiting the number of games I would be able to watch on the computer. I just could not justify the difference in cost between $14.95 for the audio and $79.95 for the video for the number of days I would be able to watch the games on the computer.

This summer, we have two additional weeks off because our winter and spring breaks were shortened by one week each.
I will be not be traveling which will mean I will have more time to watch baseball. After watching a few minutes of a Spring Training game with my dad on his computer last week, I finally decided to take MLB up on their offer to upgrade my subscription from Gameday Audio to MLB.TV for $79.95 (a savings of $20.00 off the current MLB.TV price).

I followed the directions in my email offer and clicked on the link to upgrade. It took me to a page saying “Thank you. Your request to upgrade your subscription to MLB.TV Yearly has been processed.” And….. NOTHING! You would think they would want to make this an easy procedure to upgrade to make more money. It has now been an entire week and I am still not upgraded to MLB.TV!

So far, I have sent three emails and have made five phone calls. I hoped that the problem could be resolved through emails. It is very difficult to call to resolve the problem over the phone with the time difference here (I have only about 10 minutes to spend on the phone in the morning before leaving for work and by the time my work day is over it is too late to call). Unfortunately so far, the email replies have been useless, mostly just saying that I need to call to resolve the issue.

The phone calls have not resulted in any success so far either. I thought things were resolved after the first phone call, but after hanging up, driving to work, and then later trying to see if I could watch a game, I ran into the same problem.

At the end of my second phone call, a much longer phone call again made early in the morning, I was told that my problem was a level two issue and I would have to be transferred to a different department where I would then have to ask to be transferred again to the level two section of that department. Seriously? I told the person that I did not have any more time to talk on the phone that morning. I was already late. I asked the person to please document the issue and send it along to the level two person hoping that through their communication, the problem could be resolved so that I would not have to call back again. Silly me!

I called MLB for a third time Friday morning (a holiday in Hawaii). This time I asked to please speak to a supervisor in the level two section. Before that could happen, I once again had to go through the history of my problem and then was put on hold while the issue was researched further. When the person helping me came back on the phone, she started to talk about the refund I requested and how all I needed to do was to go back onto the MLB sited and sign up for the full price for MLB.TV on their website. Refund? Cancellation? HUH?

I insisted on speaking to a supervisor. I was transferred to Andrew, a very nice supervisor who finally seemed to understand the issue. I was put on hold again while he now researched and worked on the problem. When he came back on the line, he told me that the best he could do was to prioritize my problem and send it up to corporate. He said that they would get back to me within 48 hours. He told me that the 48 hours would be the next 48 hours even though the weekend was coming up. I asked if I could call him back again if the problem was not resolved. He told me that would be impossible. Clearly there are some communication issues at MLB.com.

A couple of hours later in the day, I realized that they only had my work phone number on file. I called back, jumped through the same hoops, had to go through the entire problem, etc. and then finally was able to make sure they had my home number so that they could call me this weekend to resolve the problem, or so I thought!

This morning, 48 hours later, I called MLB again. After another 10 minutes on hold while the person naturally researched the issue, I was told that corporate does not work on the weekends. Surprise! The person on the phone told me that someone would call me back within 48 working hours. I am now wondering if their definition of 48 hours means two days or 8 hours times 6 days?

I explained to the person that this was not going to work since I will be sleeping during the first half of their work day (they better not call me at 3 in the morning) and would only have about 10 minutes to talk on the phone IF they did happen to call while I was awake and getting ready for work. Once I leave for work, I will not have any time to talk on the phone again until lunch when their day will be over. On top of that, it would be impossible to call me at either home or work since it is too complicated for them to have both a home and work number on file. I can only provide one phone number as my contact number.

I requested that she please notate in my file that I would like them to just fix the problem!! I requested to either have an email sent to me or to have them leave a message on my home phone stating that the problem is fixed. Anyone want to take bets on the email or message I will be getting... that is IF I even hear back from MLB?

The first Red Sox game of the year is next Sunday. The Red Sox play the Yankees and the game will be broadcast on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. One of the bonuses of MLB.TV is being able to watch and listen to the NESN local Boston broadcast of the game instead of having to be tortured by Joe Morgan on ESPN spout off more of his baseball wisdom and annoying quotes such as “Great hitters get hits.” No longer will I have to mute my TV and instead listen to the delayed Gameday Audio feed.

I never thought it would take this long to simply upgrade from Gameday Audio to MLB.TV. They have one more week to get this problem resolved. Fingers are crossed.