WatchESPN customer care. Rant.

My brain almost just exploded.

I just spent 40 minutes on the phone with WatchESPN customer care. Been having issues for months with streams pausing, sometimes for a minute or more, loss of resolution, etc.

I went thru the typical clear browser history/cookies/cache on Chrome and IE. No difference. As I type right now, I had a spinning icon for nearly 30 seconds.

I explained my setup as a home theater PC hard-wired to a 100mbps internet service and connected over HDMI to a tv.

It was the last part that did things in. The rep’s response was they don’t support hdmi connections to TVs. They said I could use a set top box like a Roku or Apple TV.

Uhhhh... how the *%%&$@ do you think those connect to TVs?!?!

I asked WHY is a PC connected over HDMI to a TV not supported. *crickets*. The answer was essentially “just because”

I escalated to a supervisor after trying to explain to the rep that I could write a thesis on why a TV over HDMI would NOT affect the streaming video and certainly not cause it to stop and buffer. No response.

Supervisor gave me the same spiel. I asked, “If I have a desktop PC hooked over DVI or VGA to a computer monitor, would you support that?” “Yes” was the reply.

*head explodes*

I said, ok, pretend that’s what I have, let’s troubleshoot that. She said maybe my router was saturated with traffic (as I look at my ASUS app and see no more than 10-11mbps in use over all devices and I have a 100mbps service that provides usually about 110-115 from averaging various online speed tests)

Answer was to call my provider. So, yeah, maybe Spectrum has throttled watchespn.com to unusable speeds despite the fact they don’t provide tiered service (at least not yet even tho the FCC is trying to fuck over America by allowing that)

So. I will make the call to Spectrum and engage in that exercise in futility and will end up with no resolution to this. Ever.

Anyone can see the WatchESPN twitter feed and the non-stop posts of performance problems. You can look at reddit or random off topic sections from online forums from travel to politics to basket weaving and find endless complaints of WatchESPN performance.

Un. Bee. Leave. Able.