I sat down last night to do something I really didn’t want to do, but felt I had to: order the pay-per-view broadcast of the U.S. soccer team’s World Cup qualifier in Guatemala.
The game was only available that way because of the rules which give the home team all television rights. The Guatemalan federation sold the rights to Traffic, a Brazilian company with an American office. They specialize in being player agents and managing television rights. They are also the most evil, disgusting people in the world when it comes to American soccer, but that’s another screed for another day.
I didn’t want to fork out the dough, but just have a compulsion to watch these qualifying games. So I found the pay-per-view listing on my Comcast system and settled in. The screen had a button which said “Buy,” so I clicked it. That led to another screen with a button which said “Buy.” I clicked that one also and found myself staring at a third screen. I needed to call in to order the program.
Why the hell do they have Buy buttons if you can’t use them to buy something? I had to translate the 1-800-XFINITY number to digits (not a big deal, but still annoying), find an old bill to log in to my account via the phone system, then had to find my wife’s Social Security number since the account is in her name (and she was asleep) and they won’t let you do anything without that.
And they still almost couldn’t hook me up. Apparently, our account was not authorized to buy pay-per-view events. I don’t know why. I don’t remember setting that up. Even if I did, there should be some notification of that or it should disable the multiple buttons that say “Buy” or it should give me the opportunity to authorize the box using the account number or something. If Comcast can send me a message on all three of our boxes every time there is a boxing or MMA match for sale, they can figure out how to get me to call without stringing me along until the end.
Thankfully, Carmen, my new favorite customer service rep, came through for me, authorized my account and got me the game before kickoff. She even sympathized with me about the illogical nature of having a Buy button for something I needed to call in to buy. Why does the logic always exist with the CSRs and not elsewhere in situations like this?