Gameday Audio is Still Broken

Spring Training has started, baseball is back! Unfortunately MLB.com has done nothing to repair a glaring flaw in their Gameday Audio system.

I have paid for Gameday Audio since the system started. But often last year when I clicked to listen to a game, I got an error message saying I was a returning subscriber from the previous year who had not yet paid for the current year. This was untrue, but the only work-around was to switch to a different browser. Sometimes this worked, sometimes I wasn't allowed to listen to a game for which I had paid.

I don't know how many times I complained to MLB.com about this. Usually they ignored my complaints, when they did answer they apparently never understood the problem or did anything about it.

I had great hopes, however, that with a new season the problem would be solved. The new MLB media player is even based on a new platform, Microsoft's Flash alternative Silverlight. But no, less than a week into Spring Training the problem persists, MLB.com has obviously done nothing to fix it.

They did, however actually respond to my complaint, but their response fails to inspire confidence:

Response (Venus Powell) - 03/04/2008 03:01 PM	
Dear Fan,
 
Thank you for your email. 
 
Unfortunately, you have not provided enough information to assist with
 your request.  Please provide us with the email address you have
 registered under so we can assist your further. 
 
Thank you for taking the time to write!
 


Regards,
MLB.com Support

This message saying they didn't know my e-mail address was sent to my e-mail address. They seem to have no problems collecting money from subscribers, but are clueless about fixing a basic problem in their system. (As well as apparently not knowing what e-mail addresses they are writing to.)

And they still haven't addressed other problems I have raised with them, why purchased MLB.tv games can't be burned to DVDs to watch on a TV set (who on Earth wants to watch a two and a half hour baseball game on a computer?) and why they can't make Gameday Audio available on a delayed basis in MP3 format?