Not What I Expected

MLB site strikes again

I was surprised that this season, MLB (the site that deals with the online multimedia products from Major League Baseball) didn't barf into my lap on opening day, as it has every past season. No, it decided to wait until today to deal me dirt.

I clecked on the multimedia tag to open up a browser window for the radio broadcast of the Cubs game. The first message I received from the site was that they didn't support my browser, which is safari, and that I should use either firefox/netscape or MSIE. Oddly enough, it's been working fine with Safari until this morning.

Then it told me that I didn't have a subscription. Unfortunately, I have been paying these idiots for their miserable service since MLB decided to take the games from the radio stations streaming them, and put them on a "pay for" service. Believe me, I'd be lots happier if the Cubs games were still on the WGN radio site, and I didn't have to deal with changing services to go from the pre-game to the actualy boradcast, and then back again. Not that I'm going to get that, though.

So I check my credit card statements. Nope--MLB, even though they had told me they were going to automatically charge my card, hadn't. I've learned that attempting to deal with MLB's alleged "customer service" is a no-win game. The customer service script they use is to tell the customer (note--in many cases, the customer has paid for a service they aren't getting) that they are completely full of shit, and don't know what they are doing. I've had these conversations, from "it won't run on a Mac--get a Windows box", to "there's a problem, I don't know when it will be fixed", followed by a hang-up. Nice guys. They mlb.com people know they have a monopoly, and once they have your money, they don't have to care.

So, it's time to pay up. I finish the process, and check my mailbox. ALong with the "thanks for your money", I see a "if we weren't able to charge to your credit card, we cancelled your account w/o telling you, and we started it back up again" email. Now, *there's* customer service--first they use the negative option for renewals, and then they kill off accounts without telling the customers when they can't get the charge to go through. Ever hear of contacting the customers? There must be a reason, other than selling account info and sending advertisments, that you require email addresses, right?

I had hopes that with XM, I'd be able to get away from this stupidity, but XM is following the "play one feed from the game" model. Maybe once compression and bandwidth improves, I can hope for a "pick your broadcaster" option. I'm looking forward to it.

And to Bud Selig, self-described technophobe, who according to the New York Times, admits that he can't point his browser to the MLB website: Bud, get someone who understands e-commerce, electronic product delivery, and who actually gives a damn about the customers, and have them manage the site. Given all the grief that's currently comng down in baseball, can you really afford to anger *more* of your fanbase?

(technorati tags: baseball, business,ecommerce)

The new NHL "ad campaign"

Let's cut to the chase--Bettman, be a mensch and admit < a href="mms://wm.nhl.na-central.speedera.net/wm.nhl.na-central/comp/ad/ad1_700.wmv">this (requires win media player or something else that understands .wmv files) was a bad idea, get something else into production, and have that ready for opening night?

My first thought was that it was 2AM, the beer was warm, the pizza was cold, and the ad exec had been watching Battlestar Galactica way too much. The "woman behind the man" is nothing more than a very bad riff on "number six" being nasty to Dr Baltar again. At least "number six" doesn't look like she just wandered in from a gentleman's club lingerie show and the rain has set in.

It's a "let's throw any old crud together for the client meeting tomorrow, and when they hate it, we'll have more time to do something decent--what do you mean, 'they loved it?'" situation, and anyone who's had to be creative on a deadline has dealt with it. However, most of the time the clients have run into the same deal, and they know what the proper response is. Maybe no one prompted Bettman?

But seriously Mr Bettman, what you've told me with this ad is that you and the NHL don't give a good goddamn about me as a customer. I'm a woman, I make a damned good salary, and they are *my* season tickets. I put up with a lot of "attract the 20-35 blue collar male" bullshit because I know you're trying to make a buck as well. But in a season where you and the NHL should be going out of your way to retain your customers, you appear to be happily running down the road of "piss them off--they'll keep coming back". Maybe you still need to learn that while it costs a heck of of lot to get those butts into the seat for the first game, it's going to cost you a heck of a lot more to get those customers back when you've successfully driven them off.

If I were a franchise owner looking at decreased attendance this year, I'd be really angry with the home office for a screw-up like this. It's my bucks on the line, and the NHL has baffled and antagonized *my* potential customers. I'm going to have to counter-advertise to make sure that when the recreational dollars are spent, that they spend on my product. That can't be a happy situation.

The hazards of a monolingual staff

Deadspin reports on a French-language blog that's living in the mlb.com namespace. I'd make a guess that no one in the MLB blog crew reads French. The blogger can't wager on a ballgame to save his life (hint--bet *against* the Royals, no matter how good the numbers are), and just that should be sending good old MLB into a state of shock. The other postings would send them into orbit.

When I was doing web work for the SF Spiders, so long ago, I was one of the few people on the staff *or* the team who could handle both French and English. Part of my job was pre-reading fan mail that went to members of the team. We wanted to avoid email "shot your dog, slept with your wife, your golatending sucks, and I'm coming to SF to kill you" emails getting to the players without at least a cursory check.

That said, the hardest part of translating some of the French-language email was dealing with misspelled Joual slang and jargon. While I don't speak that nice continental French (I'd have to say my French is mostly SRC, with a smidge of North Africa thrown in), my grasp of current Quebecois French wasn't (and still isn't) what it should be, either. Add to that some 12 year old fanboy who can't spell, and the "WTF is he trying to say here?" situations kick in.

There were a number of emails in that batch that had absolutely nothing to do with ice hockey....

On the other hand, at least some the French email was on-topic. WHile I received some absolutely delightful email from various UK fan groups (a number of the players had been in UK leagues the previous seasons) way too much of the English language email was from the various chippies and "girlfriends" throughout the IHL--one of the players had at least two in every IHL city who *all* thought they were the one and only-- or from male playmates who loved to recount the last time they and the player in question met up in Houston with "Annie and her great guns".

Whee.

That said, at least I caught the stuff that was actionable or at least worrisome. The MLB people? Well, I'd be out hiring a localization firm to do a survey of the blog sites hosted on MLB to find out what other gems might be out there.

NHL draft, a thought

It's been noted that in the first round, the NHL teams drafted a bunch of players from Minnesota, while not drafting any from Russia.

To my knowledge, the state of Minnesota has not yet instituted a "ransom price" to allow players to leave the state and play in the NHL. You think maybe that has something to do with it?

Four Years at USC Drama school, and I'm a dancing catcher's mitt

The Portland Beavers are advertising a visit by the Spitball Gang during the Beavers current homestand.

Why do I keep flashing on that Subway commercial where the kid keeps telling his father "Daddy! I think the mascot is dead!"?