MLBTV- WTF?

[David HK]

So, here I am, living and working offshore.  I use my Paypal account for one purpose- to send $ to my pal, who's taking care of stored stuff for me, as such, I don't keep a very big balance there on an ongoing basis.  As I'm about to send him a payment today, I notice my account has been wiped out- by Mlbtv.  Somehow, they reached into my paypal account, taking more than the balance I had there, which triggered an automatic debit from my US bank account, reducing the balance I thought I had there.  Now, in order to send $ to my friend, which is due right now, I have to wait the 3-5 business days for the $ to hit my account.  How the hell is mlbtv able to heist it immediately?

 

How did they do this?  Argh-  there it was, last year, at playoff time.  I signed up for the $19.95 playoff package, and used paypal.  Now, they came busting in again, and took more than I had there.

 

There are so many frustrations with that 'service'- with their blackouts, and crappy feed the keeps freezing on and on- I gave up using them a couple of years ago, but went back for the nitty gritty last fall.  Now, it's come back to bite me in the ass.  

 

Their 'customer service' is the worst in the universe, this side of cable tv.  Try getting your dough back in a timely fashion, or having them address any other issues- and how they manage to hide their cancellation procedure in a Byzantine web is un-effing-believable.  

 

I hate them so much.  Yes, it's on me, for not paying enough attention to my online flank, but dammit, they are a real pain in the bum.

 

I hate them so much.

 

Thoughts?

[Thrylos]

Got to look at the check boxes and what you check or uncheck.  You likely did not check the automatic renewal box, thus....

 

That's on you.

[Willihammer]

They did send an email on 2/15. At least I got one.

 

The thing to remember is that mlb.tv considers you to be "subscribed" to their service as though it were a netflix account or something.

[blairpaul715]

Yea, i had to call in today to have my subscription cancelled and get a refund to my credit card that they charged me from last yr after i bought the fathers day promo........auto renewed the whole season this yr, I will never pay full price for MLBtv.

[biggentleben]

I gladly pay full price every year for a premium subscription to mlbtv and milbtv. I don't have any baseball on a channel available without a $100+ monthly cable package here, so it pays for itself before the first discounted price option of the season. By far the best sports streaming service available. Yes, the blackouts suck, but that's not on the service, that's on MLB and the MLBPA. Heck, even in a blackout, I get the choice of the radio feed, and for a hardcore baseball nut, there's nothing quite like listening to a ball game narrated to you, so that's about like being denied filet mignon only to be offered center cut sirloin.

[HitInAPinch]

Yesterday, I signed up for the Direct TV Sports Pack to see some Twins games.  $12 per month.  When the regular season comes and MLB.tv get's all the games, I simply cancel the Sports Pack.  The MLB.tv thing seemed a little suspicious to me.

[biggentleben]

  On 3/4/2016 at 11:17 AM, HitInAPinch said:

Yesterday, I signed up for the Direct TV Sports Pack to see some Twins games. $12 per month. When the regular season comes and MLB.tv get's all the games, I simply cancel the Sports Pack. The MLB.tv thing seemed a little suspicious to me.

Gets all the games in what way? MLB.tv has over a half dozen spring games available for every team as well as audio for every game in spring.

 

Also, DirectTV would involve signing up for DirectTV in the first place, something I'm not at all interested in.

[HitInAPinch]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 11:53 AM, biggentleben said:

Gets all the games in what way? MLB.tv has over a half dozen spring games available for every team as well as audio for every game in spring.

Also, DirectTV would involve signing up for DirectTV in the first place, something I'm not at all interested in.

oy vey, kinda early in the morning for this.  So.....

 

I prefer to spend my money on what I want to watch.  I already have a DirectTV package where I can add the Sports Pack and watch the Twins SP game for only $12 a month.  I do admit that DirectTV is getting to the point where I can have similar content in a less attractive package for less.  Frankly, I'm still judging how many games I'll actually be able to watch.

 

The schedules I've seen has MLB.tv dominating the regular season schedules, with Fox Sports North showing no regular season games.  My problem with MLB.tv is the same I'm now having with DirectTV:  paying for a lot of content I know I won't watch because of lack of interest and time.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 5:52 AM, biggentleben said:

I gladly pay full price every year for a premium subscription to mlbtv and milbtv. I don't have any baseball on a channel available without a $100+ monthly cable package here, so it pays for itself before the first discounted price option of the season. By far the best sports streaming service available. Yes, the blackouts suck, but that's not on the service, that's on MLB and the MLBPA. Heck, even in a blackout, I get the choice of the radio feed, and for a hardcore baseball nut, there's nothing quite like listening to a ball game narrated to you, so that's about like being denied filet mignon only to be offered center cut sirloin.

I can tell you how to get around blackouts if you're interested. It's how I watch baseball.

 

Given that I'm actually paying MLB to circumvent their own system, I have no moral qualms about doing so, either.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 11:17 AM, HitInAPinch said:

The MLB.tv thing seemed a little suspicious to me.

How so? It's been around for over a decade. There's nothing suspicious about it.

[NCtwinsfan]

So I have been reading Twins Daily for years, almost daily, and this was the article that inspired me to create an account and finally post something. I love MLB.TV because now that I have moved to Charlotte NC from Bemidji, I can still watch all the games (except against Baltimore, Reds, and Braves). I always got the audio, but was offered half price in May, so I got it. At the end of the season, I made sure to turn off the auto renew option in my account. About a month before spring training that year, i got a message saying that my subscription would renew soon, I went to my account and found the settings had changed back to auto renew. I turned it off. The next month my card was charged, and subscription was renewed. I was furious. I was able to get it cancelled after dealing with the terrible customer service. But I could not delete my card from the account. I later cancelled that card (for a different reason), so they could no longer use that card to take money from me.

 

Ok, so long story short, I found a solution. Every May, when they offer me the half price package, I go buy a $100 Visa gift card and use that to pay for the subscription. I spend the remainder on the card, and then next spring when they try to use that card to renew the subscription at full price, it is empty. This way I get to see my Twins for $50 for most of the season, and don't have to worry about the auto renew.

 

 

[biggentleben]

  On 3/4/2016 at 1:44 PM, Brock Beauchamp said:

I can tell you how to get around blackouts if you're interested. It's how I watch baseball.

 

Given that I'm actually paying MLB to circumvent their own system, I have no moral qualms about doing so, either.

In all seriousness, the only time it's ever an issue for me is when the Twins and Braves play, but I will be at both games this year in person. So I'm not really hit too hard by blackout stuff personally.

[biggentleben]

  On 3/4/2016 at 12:25 PM, HitInAPinch said:

oy vey, kinda early in the morning for this. So.....

 

I prefer to spend my money on what I want to watch. I already have a DirectTV package where I can add the Sports Pack and watch the Twins SP game for only $12 a month. I do admit that DirectTV is getting to the point where I can have similar content in a less attractive package for less. Frankly, I'm still judging how many games I'll actually be able to watch.

 

The schedules I've seen has MLB.tv dominating the regular season schedules, with Fox Sports North showing no regular season games. My problem with MLB.tv is the same I'm now having with DirectTV: paying for a lot of content I know I won't watch because of lack of interest and time.

Um, yes MLB.tv will have every game. For every team. That's separate from the local TV deal, so FSN or whomever will have their share as well. I also watch 2-3 games each weekend day around the league along with scattered major and minor league games during the week for my writing.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 2:46 AM, David HK said:

Their 'customer service' is the worst in the universe, this side of cable tv.

I haven't had any billing issues with them, but otherwise they've been very responsive.  I called them on a holiday weekend once, because they were mistakenly blacking out games where I was staying (just outside of "Twins territory").  Talked to a rep right away, who knew exactly how to fix it, and I re-opened the app, and it worked.  Only took a couple minutes.

 

I've also seen them be very responsive on Twitter.

 

Compared to other streamers like Fox Sports Go, who often don't have to maintain a subscriber base, MLB service is pretty darn good.

[Otto von Ballpark]

Also, if you have to call MLB, your cable provider, or any company and you are dreading the experience, I've had great luck recently with a free service called getservice.com

 

https://getservice.com

 

You give them your account name/number (nothing sensitive like credit cards or passwords), tell them who to call and what resolution you desire, and they take care of it on your behalf.

 

I imagine it will eventually be a paid service, but they just started recently so they are still free.

[PseudoSABR]

I tried to sign up for MLB.tv and turned out they had already charged me.  I didn't get the email saying that they considered me a subscriber from last year - maybe it went to the spam inbox.  As far as I know there was no box to check or uncheck to avoid the re-subscribing.   The automatic subscription thing is really problematic because it isn't just a month-to-month charge, nor is it a yearly service.   It's not like I was using my MLB.tv subscription in January, thereby giving me fair notice that my subscription might continue.  And given they just got hit with a class action which obligated them to change prices and services, I'm not sure how they could use last year's subscription as opting-in to this years changed services.  

[Mike Sixel]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 1:48 PM, NCtwinsfan said:

So I have been reading Twins Daily for years, almost daily, and this was the article that inspired me to create an account and finally post something. I love MLB.TV because now that I have moved to Charlotte NC from Bemidji, I can still watch all the games (except against Baltimore, Reds, and Braves). I always got the audio, but was offered half price in May, so I got it. At the end of the season, I made sure to turn off the auto renew option in my account. About a month before spring training that year, i got a message saying that my subscription would renew soon, I went to my account and found the settings had changed back to auto renew. I turned it off. The next month my card was charged, and subscription was renewed. I was furious. I was able to get it cancelled after dealing with the terrible customer service. But I could not delete my card from the account. I later cancelled that card (for a different reason), so they could no longer use that card to take money from me.

 

Ok, so long story short, I found a solution. Every May, when they offer me the half price package, I go buy a $100 Visa gift card and use that to pay for the subscription. I spend the remainder on the card, and then next spring when they try to use that card to renew the subscription at full price, it is empty. This way I get to see my Twins for $50 for most of the season, and don't have to worry about the auto renew.

 

This is the greatest idea ever.....

[Vanimal46]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 4:24 PM, spycake said:

Also, if you have to call MLB, your cable provider, or any company and you are dreading the experience, I've had great luck recently with a free service called getservice.com

 

https://getservice.com

 

You give them your account name/number (nothing sensitive like credit cards or passwords), tell them who to call and what resolution you desire, and they take care of it on your behalf.

 

I imagine it will eventually be a paid service, but they just started recently so they are still free.

I really should start making my drunk business ideas a reality. Honest to God I had that same idea over a year ago, but sober Vanimal the next day did nothing to act on it... 

[Loosey]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 1:44 PM, Brock Beauchamp said:

I can tell you how to get around blackouts if you're interested. It's how I watch baseball.

 

Given that I'm actually paying MLB to circumvent their own system, I have no moral qualms about doing so, either.

I am interested in how you go about doing it?  I have read ways to do it and non of them seem to be what I am looking for. 

[Loosey]

What MLB.tv really needs to set up is a "Weekday Matinee Only" package.  I bet they would double their subscriber base, but only if the blackout restrictions were lifted for that package.  The reason; most of the people who would use MLB.tv are probably Men between the ages of 18-50.  The one thing that age group has in common is the majority of us work, and don't have access to live baseball games during work hours. 

 

Build that package without blackouts and their sales would skyrocket.  The blackout issues may be moot on the afternoon thing too, because as I said earlier most wouldn't be able to watch the game on their local TV because they are at work so really they are only taking away a small percent of the normal TV watchers for those game.

[biggentleben]

I guess for me a big reason why I subscribe isn't necessarily to watch the game live. I can watch archived games for days afterwards to see how a certain pitcher is doing or a certain pitcher. That would take away the benefit of anything focused on more live viewing. It also takes away issues with the blackout because I'll listen live and then watch anything I wanted to see in archive later.

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 7:03 PM, Loosey said:

What MLB.tv really needs to set up is a "Weekday Matinee Only" package.  I bet they would double their subscriber base, but only if the blackout restrictions were lifted for that package.

 

How would it double the subscriber base by adding a few games very few people could watch live?

 

And I think this is already happening, to some degree.  Fox Sports North doesn't televise every game, and invariably most of the games they skip are weekday afternoon home games.  When that happens, I believe you can then stream the other team's broadcast without blackouts in the Twins market.  (Unless you are also in the other team's market, I suppose...)

 

They're already working on a more meaningful way to address blackouts: starting soon, you will be able to stream in-market games without blackouts if you authenticate with a cable/satellite account that subscribes to the channel.  This was supposed to be in place for Fox networks in 2016, and rolling out to all teams by 2017, but I haven't heard any more details.

 

EDIT: Also, if your interest isn't limited to the local team, MLB offers a "free game of the day" every day, and on weekdays it seems like it is often a day game.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 6:54 PM, Loosey said:

I am interested in how you go about doing it?  I have read ways to do it and non of them seem to be what I am looking for. 

Go here and select a proxy. Change your proxy settings for HTTPS (not http) in Windows or OS X (Google how to do this). Keep the proxy settings window open because you're going to want to disable it in a few minutes.

 

Go to MLB.tv. Select the game, allow it to buffer and authenticate. This takes 10-ish seconds. Once you see the video try to play (it will often stutter because free proxies suck), immediately disable your proxy from the settings window you still have open. This will revert back to your local internet connection for streaming.

 

The video will accept the new connection (your local connection) and begin streaming as expected.

 

MLB.tv, like most authentication services, only authenticates during initialization of the video/service. After you've cleared authentication, you're free and clear to use your local connection.

 

Oh, and don't have a bunch of stuff open while you're doing this. You never know what kind of malicious crap is happening in the VPN and the less data you're sending it for the 1-2 minutes it's active, the better.

 

You can also pay to use a VPN/proxy with enough speed to stream video but I don't really see the point in it.

[Willihammer]

I used to do the free proxies but grew impatient with how unreliable they were. I also do not understand the vulnerability angle so for convenience/security I wound up shopping for a dedicated service and found unblock-us to fit my needs. I have used it the past two seasons. There is a video tutorial on configuring your settings, after that, it is just press and play. $4.99/month, cancel anytime.

 

https://www.unblock-us.com/

[Loosey]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 7:58 PM, Brock Beauchamp said:

Go here and select a proxy. Change your proxy settings for HTTPS (not http) in Windows or OS X (Google how to do this). Keep the proxy settings window open because you're going to want to disable it in a few minutes.

 

Go to MLB.tv. Select the game, allow it to buffer and authenticate. This takes 10-ish seconds. Once you see the video try to play (it will often stutter because free proxies suck), immediately disable your proxy from the settings window you still have open. This will revert back to your local internet connection for streaming.

 

The video will accept the new connection (your local connection) and begin streaming as expected.

 

MLB.tv, like most authentication services, only authenticates during initialization of the video/service. After you've cleared authentication, you're free and clear to use your local connection.

 

Oh, and don't have a bunch of stuff open while you're doing this. You never know what kind of malicious crap is happening in the VPN and the less data you're sending it for the 1-2 minutes it's active, the better.

 

You can also pay to use a VPN/proxy with enough speed to stream video but I don't really see the point in it.

Thanks.

[Vanimal46]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 8:16 PM, Willihammer said:

I used to do the free proxies but grew impatient with how unreliable they were. I also do not understand the vulnerability angle so for convenience/security I wound up shopping for a dedicated service and found unblock-us to fit my needs. I have used it the past two seasons. There is a video tutorial on configuring your settings, after that, it is just press and play. $4.99/month, cancel anytime.

 

https://www.unblock-us.com/

This product I can endorse. Used it in the past for my NHL GameCenter package to watch the Wild games while I lived in MN. Just set your location to a state that you don't care to watch the games (at the time I put in FL as my location) 

[HitInAPinch]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 1:45 PM, Brock Beauchamp said:

How so? It's been around for over a decade. There's nothing suspicious about it.

 

Since you posted, I'm reading more than a few comments about MLB.tv's customer service and what sounds like some billing issues.  The feel I get from their website is something like a bait and switch deal.  Just a feeling.  As far as customer service, here's my email interaction with them:

 

Subject:
Twins:  Home and Away

Message:
Hi  Pretty simple question:  I"m looking for MN Twins game broadcast of ALL games, in market and out.  Does MLB.com have a match for that?  Thanks

 

Response:

 

Thank you for contacting MLB.com.  We appreciate the time that you've taken to write, and welcome the opportunity to respond.

We sincerely apologize for the confusion, as you may determine which teams that you would be blacked out from by entering your zip code at mlb.tv and we do not offer in-access content through our service at this time.

Thank you again for your patience, and for taking the time to write!

 

I can't tell.  Did that answer my question??  

 

[biggentleben]

To answer your question, nothing can guarantee that on one network. National television deals pre-empt MLB.tv, but they have every other game, regardless of market.

[USAFChief]

  On 3/5/2016 at 3:11 PM, HitInAPinch said:

 

I can't tell.  Did that answer my question??  

Doesn't sentence one answer the question posed in sentence two?

[DrNeau]

 

  On 3/4/2016 at 4:45 AM, blairpaul715 said:

Yea, i had to call in today to have my subscription cancelled and get a refund to my credit card that they charged me from last yr after i bought the fathers day promo........auto renewed the whole season this yr, I will never pay full price for MLBtv.

 

MLB.TV auto-renews every year. I've been a subscriber for 8 years now. The only way to get out of the auto-renew would be to change the credit card on file. Still, I wouldn't be able to understand why someone would not want to auto-renew. It's as important as air.