Omloop HN and K-B-K coverage -- a formal apology from Cycling TV
by rebeccactv on Mar 3, 2009 12:11 PM EST
Email
PrintA formal apology from Cycling TV.
Dear customers,
We are aware of the video streaming quality issues that impacted on our valued customers’ viewing experience during the weekend of February 27. We have been investigating these issues, and unfortunately these problems related to the Cycling TV content distribution network.
We are working closely with our content distribution network (CDN) partner to ensure that every effort is being directed at resolving the issues and improving the consistency of our live stream quality this week.
We are planning to migrate to a more robust CDN in the next few weeks which best meets our needs, especially given our global audience. We have partnered with marketplace leaders in the content delivery space, and we expect to see marked improvement for our subscribers moving forward.
Having seen – and received customer feedback - highlighting a marked improvement in our live broadcast over the last six months, and having invested significantly in to our technology platform, it is very disappointing to have experienced the weekend’s problems.
We take full responsibility for the problems that arose, and apologise to you sincerely.
Every effort is also being made to address individual customer issues. Please contact cyclingtv@jumptv.com for assistance.
Please use this email address at any time where you may require assistance. Please free to contact us at http://cycling.tv/theinnertube as well.
Thank you
Cycling TV
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Well... let me be the first to say to Rebecca...
… none of what’s about to follow below is directed at you :) Or rolld… or Anthony… or Brian…
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
Though you may all want a cigarrette and blindfold before reading Jimbo's response...
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
Nice to hear
The problems are frustratingly persistent, but I know C.TV is the best online video when it’s functioning as designed. That said, I think you guys can tell that the subscribers are pretty close to their wits’ end. So thanks for your kind note, and please make the fixes happen ASAP.
CQRanking.com, you complete me.
by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 3, 2009 12:28 PM EST reply actions
ASAP is right
Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico are coming up and if CTV fails again more and more of us will say screw it and look for various free video feeds. I hope things are fixed and quick. Time is of the essence here.
Haven't we heard this before?
Unless some radical improvement happen before my subscription runs out April 9th, I won’t be back. I’ve been played for 3 years, enough is enough.
My subscription has run out. And I'm not renewing...
unless and until I hear, here, that it’s working for pretty much everyone, pretty much all the time, and definitely in the last 10 minutes of the race.
So it either has to get fixed before the subscriptions of Bruce and others run out, or even if the problems ARE fixed, I’ll never hear about it. I’m thinking I have good company in making that decision.
So there you go. This time, the ball really is in CTV’s court, and the clock’s ticking.
For those inclined to give CTV the benefit of the doubt
I direct you (again) to this email I rec’d from the CEO of CTV last year. There are, one might fairly say, parallels:
Dear Mark,
I am very sorry for the trouble you experienced yesterday. It is very disappointing when we have such a day and it is disappointing because we have done everything possible to make sure that things like this do not happen.
We have server capacity to spare, in theory we are only run at 40% of usage capacity yesterday, we have streaming capacity at Limelight Networks which is unlimited. In terms of usage yesterday it was busy, but on a par with California or slightly less than California and we had no issues there.
The only difference was this was a subscription only race and therefore required login / payment. In theory this should provide no issues and actually make life easier for the users as usage would be restricted to well within capacity….so why it was not faultless we do not know….we’re asking the questiosn of our US suppliers at Narrowstep and Limelight and our server suppliers in the other countries.
The issue yesterday was not with streaming…as you can see there were a lot of people getting that perfectly, it was with the loading of the pages, once loaded it was okay. That to me say data usage on the registration / payment process although the supplier in thsi respect denies it saying we were only ever at 70 – 80%. However i believe that it was a very heavy demand from last minute payers that was the issue and the data those pages require. In theory still no problems should have arisen, but despite all our planning they did and we need to find out why and correct it.
To counter this issue for Paris Nice we have immediately asked for Juimp Tv to provide us with additional back up servers so we can make sure we have massive capacity. We will trasnition onto Jump TV fully after the Giro with capacity for millions of users.
For KBK if we have issues then I’ll make it free to air…i am certain we can sustain the streams for for how ever many people want to watch it, but if the regsitration process fails to do what it should i’d rather everyone sees it than not.
You have my sincere apologies. We stream over 160 days of live cycling and we very, very seldom have any issues. We also have a massive upgrade / roll out planned for late May which will have a lot more features and a better and easier interface. We’d hoped to have this ready for now, but march Madness has delayed this and we will not then switch technology with Flanders / Roubaix and the Giro coming up.
The majority of our issues come with Mac users and we are also working to resolve this going ahead for live. Call me if you want to discuss this in person.
My sincere apologies.
Simon Brydon
C.E.O.
Cycling TV
I’m sure I could dredge up another half dozen emails/posts saying the same thing at various points over the last few years.
So you're saying these might be form letters?
Good God!
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
Rebecca is real
But is management??
CQRanking.com, you complete me.
by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 3, 2009 2:14 PM EST up reply actions
Sure they're real
Real fucking crooks.
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
My mistake
Didn’t mean to slander the well run, impeccably honest management team that is currently in place.
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
Hooray for Drewdotdot, who is surely a heavy-duty Podium Cafe insider.
What a stud.
Weaklings!
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
Don't be fatuous Daniel
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
I'll tell you what I'm blathering about...
I’ve got information man! New shit has come to light! And shit… man, it’s the content delivery network. Well sure, man. Look at it… a young struggling internet television provider, in the parlance of our times, you know, and it, uh, uh, owes money all over town, including to known pornographers, and that’s cool… that’s, that’s cool, I’m, I’m saying, it needs money, man. And of course they’re going to say it’s a one time problem, because… it wants more, man! It’s got to feed the monkey, I mean uh… hasn’t that ever occurred to you, man? Sir?
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
Our money was in your hands!
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
Lady, I got buddies who died face-down in the muck so that you and I could enjoy this streaming video!
What the fuck does Vietnam have to do with Cycling TV?
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
Keep your ugly fuckin' goldbrickin' ass
out of my beach community.
CYCLING TV SUCKS. DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY
Beware - they will bill you automatically unless you cancel recurring payments... Login to PayPal -> select MyAccount -> Profile -> Recurring Payments and cancel Cycling TV. Check your history to confirm that it worked. Then crack open a fine Belgian beer and toast your future happiness.
Face it Jens, there isn't any connection
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
I don't want to break the chain
But I love how the folks here can work Lebowski into anything and everything.
And to continue in theme
This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!
In the future, can we change
‘Larry’ to ‘CyclingTV’ when using this quote?
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
Ok.. This is by far the weirsdest conversation I've read in podiumcafe history..
(Perhaps the Centaurs were stranger)
Crashdan: "Veni Vidi Vici beats Wing Kong Exchange... … and I’ll change my signature to a backwards smile for a month."
Veni Vidi Vici beats Txirrindulariak and I win a date..
They should provide the DVD in your starterspackage when you subscribe at podiumcafe
Crashdan: "Veni Vidi Vici beats Wing Kong Exchange... … and I’ll change my signature to a backwards smile for a month."
Veni Vidi Vici beats Txirrindulariak and I win a date..
You're planning an improvement "in the next few weeks," huh?
So I guess we can forget about seeing the coverage of Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico that we paid for.
Also
this right here is brilliant:
Please free to contact us at http://cycling.tv/theinnertube as well.
Of course you can feel free to contact them there. That doesn’t mean you’ll get any response out of them. As you can imagine, people started posting questions and pleas for help at at the Innertube on Saturday morning, when Het Nieuwblad started. And the first response from CTV?* Was a cut and paste of the above on Tuesday afternoon. That’s it. Nothing more.
*Well, there was a brief intervention in which a CTV employee took down a list of sponsors that someone had posted, suggesting that unhappy CTV users contact these sponsors and tell them what they were getting for their money.
“Well, there was a brief intervention in which a CTV employee took down a list of sponsors that someone had posted, suggesting that unhappy CTV users contact these sponsors and tell them what they were getting for their money.”
An out of date list of “sponsors” at that. Also, the live race chat, where I was on hand the whole time keeping users updated with the situation.
Frankly, the reason for the delay was that we felt that the fans wouldn’t want another “We apologise for the problem” reply. We agreed to hold fire until we had a definite explanation and knew exactly who was accountable for the problem. It probably looks like the same old CTV, but it really isn’t. We spent those three days in various meetings, sourcing the problems and discussing how we could ensure they wouldn’t occur again during the Paris-Nice. Yes that means the old CTV, the one of that Simon Brydon fellow you keep bringing up, was pretty shitty. This one isn’t.
I don’t know what I can do to convince you it’s an isolated incident, so I’m not going to try to. I’m going to go out on a date with a beautiful woman, then ride my bike tomorrow morning, then get back on the phone and make sure we don’t fuck this up again.
I think that’s what everyone here is waiting for. Your and Rebecca’s presence here has been appreciated, and I can appreciate holding off on the responses until a cause is known. But at this point a reliable product is what everyone wants. Personally, I’m out of town racing every weekend in April so I haven’t re-upped my subscription. I’m going to wait until May and hear whether your efforts have been successful. I truly hope they are, as I have thoroughly enjoyed the times with C.tv over the last three years. But I’m not going to pay for a service I probably won’t receive.
"Never swing a small stick. " Andy Hampsten
seriously
I don’t know what I can do to convince you it’s an isolated incident,
Are you implying that this performance is an isolated incident? Really, in front of all these people who have dealt with CTV over the past few years?
And this:
Yes that means the old CTV, the one of that Simon Brydon fellow you keep bringing up, was pretty shitty. This one isn’t.
So you were lying before about CTV being able to handle it, but not now? Okay.
Tour Down Under???
That only worked in low feed (even then badly), so saying this weekend was an isolated incident is simply not true.
ROLD
Do please kick your management’s ass over this. Maybe they are different people, but this is the last wakeup call. Thanks. And don’t get distracted by women. This is too important: we are a month away from Flanders.
CQRanking.com, you complete me.
by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 3, 2009 2:16 PM EST up reply actions
For those interested...
… here is a current list of sponsors you may feel free to voice a clear opinion to or just boycott outright if you feel so inclined.
http://www.cycling.tv/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=101759&SPID=12555&DB_OEM_ID=20300&ATCLID=1439622
Personally, I’m waiting until Flanders.
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
Hmmmm - maybe should have thought a bit harder before writing:
don’t know what I can do to convince you it’s an isolated incident,
. If you have to tell us users it’s a reliable service I think you’ve got problems. Strangely enough if it was actually a reliable service most of us would be convinced that it was. I think you have to appreciate that a lot of the anger comes from people really wanting this to work; we’re frustrated because we can see the potential, we can see a product that we really want but time and again the delivery is letting us down and we can see that if it continues it’s going to disappear.
As for myself I’m not subscribing again. Besides the quality issues there is too much of your content that is “North America Only”.
Paris-Roubaix, Liege-Bastogne-Liege (North America only), Fleche Wallonne (North America only), Paris-Nice (North America only), Lombardia, MSR, the Giro, Tirreno Adriatico . . . . can’t imagine I’d actually want to watch any of those. Given that I have to elsewhere most of the time anyway I don;‘t really see why I should bother with C.Tv at all – I’ve even discovered I like listening to commentary in Italian.
that's another thing
Rothko’s right. Even if CTV manages to kill all the other live viddy, there’s still tickers and radio, and my language skills are getting sharper every season.
Seems like a lot of the people I’m counting on to tell me if CTV cures its most recent case of server constipation are not going to be able to tell me much, because they’re not slated to see much.
Look, if you’ve supposedly got such huge frigging bandwidth for general purposes, through the race open as soon as things start to slow from payment and login. I will feel only mildly cheated that others are watching “my” feed for free, so long as I can see. As opposed to feeling completely and systemically cheated, as I do when practically no-one on PdC can watch.
Well, that statement presumes I will be paying, which I won’t do until everything works reliably. But you get what I mean. Basically, I’m suggesting you go all NPR on us for the end bits. Some of us will pay just to be good citizens, and the rest of us will pay to get the rest of the race.
Alternatively, set up a time cut-off for signing up for service before the race, and an alternate server to sign up after the race has started, with a time delay. Send the signups over in batches every 10 minutes, instead of trying to make it instantaneous during the race. And make the process transparent: “your sign up will be sent to the main computer within 10 minutes. At that time, you will get a confirmation, and be able to log on.”
got to say that's one brave lady to step into this room...
I never played, and probably will never play, but in deference to those that have and do
best wishes…
by Christopher See on Mar 3, 2009 12:48 PM EST reply actions
you guys deserve an explanation and aplogy...
…and yes I did stick around, I am here to read and pass on your valued comments and feedback.
We deserve what we paid for
Your apology is appreciated, but it is irrelevant to the fact that your service is horrible and you guys cannot provide what you charge people for, which is live racing. Nothing personal, but this is starting to look like the Lucy/Charlie Brown skit involving kicking a football. I’m done with you guys for now, I will not be renewing my service for this year, but tell you what… if you guys do manage to figure it out and can put together an entire season of solid service, then I will consider coming back. I wish you luck. Sincerely.
CYCLING TV SUCKS. DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY
Beware - they will bill you automatically unless you cancel recurring payments... Login to PayPal -> select MyAccount -> Profile -> Recurring Payments and cancel Cycling TV. Check your history to confirm that it worked. Then crack open a fine Belgian beer and toast your future happiness.
I agree with Jimbo. I will
need proof this time that it works consistently before a sign up again. I am hopeful but based on the past two years………………
Rebecca
I am sure you realize what an utter clusterfuck CTV is, more than anyone here. You know (I think), that we are not a bunch of incompetent whiners here. You are also quite aware of how many times we’ve gotten the same message from CTV in response to its failures. The only thing that CTV can do is deliver the service that people pay for, consistently over time. Until I hear that CTV has managed this, I will continue to speak negatively about the company and warn people away from it. CTV has used up whatever goodwill it might have had, and has very much earned its reputation as a poor-service-approaching-fraudulent company.
Here's another suggestion, Rebecca
You should see my post below about CyclingTV editing its own entry to remove factual information that it doesn’t appreciate. Tell CTV to stop that, and now. Also, it will probably be a net benefit to CTV if CTV-ROLD/Hal would just stop posting here. He seems to be a fan of taking an aggressive line in pushing ridiculous claim, and it just pisses people off even more. Which is fine, if you’re trolling. Not so much if you’re supposedly speaking for a company asking for the audience’s money.
ROLD has been conciliatory at times
And he actually is allowed to have a life and a bike and a gal pal, and to clear his brain. I actually do believe that there are new people and new attitudes involved. The look and feel—when you can get anything to look at, or feel—is certainly different, and massively more elaborate. Someone’s put boundless energy into this thing. Before, it was the standard shit sandwich. And we paid for it then. Now, someone is taking loving care on the fresh baked bread and the garnishes. They pickled their own little onions, and they’re offering a choice of 5 sorts of cheese with it. I get the feeling they indeed don’t mean to be serving the same old shit sandwich.
But they still are.
And I can’t eat another bite.
I’m over the anger and the hate. I’ve got the love for what they’re trying to do. I’m cheering them on. But here’s this nice C-note dangling from my fingers—paycheck, guys, paycheck!—and they don’t get it until the shit stops. If your year ends soon, please take the same pledge. No dough until the plops stop.
The most valued feedback I can give you is:
CTV is losing customers at a spectacular rate right now and all the form-letters in the world aren’t going to stop it. Delivering the product it has charged people money for is the only way for CTV to stay in business.
meh
Me, I’m just hoping this issue can go away soon one way or another, so we can spend more time with bike racing and less time with cycling.tv issues.
That is why I cancelled my subscription
It was sucking the joy out of watching worse than the reLanceation.
That's bad.. I mean really bad..
If you can do worse than the relanceaction…
Crashdan: "Veni Vidi Vici beats Wing Kong Exchange... … and I’ll change my signature to a backwards smile for a month."
Veni Vidi Vici beats Txirrindulariak and I win a date..
agreed
I’d much rather talk about how Cav is going to eat Boonen for lunch this year, wonder how many victories Valv.piti can wrap up before he’s popped, and other cycling fun. Unfortunately, CTV is the means by which so many of us gather the facts on which to base our opinions, and extricating ourselves from that situation is pretty hard.
Sure - RAI should carry it flawelessly
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
well, it would help with our fashion judgements ;-)
Tend to think he will not be present, CONI will simply announce the decision. I haven’t seen any news about a new hearing.
Dear C.TV...
Last year, I waited an hour and a half to log into your website to watch Flanders. Just… log in. Then, once that was accomplished, there was the problem with figuring out which feed would actually work (resulting in several running jokes about buffering, etc.).
It has been a year. While I consider the engineering of your site to be so far BELOW current web design standards that it should be used as a case study (really? forced popup windows?) I have generally figured out how to struggle through the morass to get to what I need. Did you not see the Tour Tracker that Adobe built for the Tour of California? Weren’t you embarrassed by that? Weren’t you HORRIBLY embarrassed by that? How could you not be? It threw your failings into such high defintion that we stood flabbergasted. I mean Jesus Christ… I STREAMED THE TOURTRACKER VIDEO LIVE OVER MY PHONE TO MY LAPTOP AND PLAYED IT OVER A GODDAMN CAR STEREO!!!!!!!!!! I should at least be able to watch Cycling TV live feeds over a dedicated T1.
Here’s the deal: Fuck up Flanders again… we all leave… you give us our money back.
No bullshit, no equivocating. We promise to stick around to Flanders… you screw it up and we ALL get our money back. That means easy log in… and a working 1200 stream REGARDLESS OF PHYSICAL LOCATION for everyone from the start of Rebecca’s interviews through the podium presentations.
That is the deal. If you can’t get that right by now, you never will.
You ask us for big boy money… $100 for your service; we expect you to run a big boy service. Either do it… or quit it and give us back our money. Anything less would be dishonest at best and outright fraudulent at worst.
Thank you…
Daniel
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
He did
I STREAMED THE TOURTRACKER VIDEO LIVE OVER MY PHONE TO MY LAPTOP AND PLAYED IT OVER A GODDAMN CAR STEREO!!!!!!!!!!
For real and for true.
It's true... I did...
“Chris…” was there…
“Sui Juris” was there…
“Nikki” was there…
and I, “Crashdan” was doing it.
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
Hey, I have a pic...
<img src=“”http://twitpic.com/1ma4p" title=“Serious work being done in the PdC Race Vehicle. on TwitPic”>
"/>
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
The PdC Team Car was very cool. :-)
It had all the techology and wisdom one could want.
It even came with a sleeping area. Just ask Chris. tee hee.
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
hmm (grunt)
whu? someone say something?
CQRanking.com, you complete me.
by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 3, 2009 2:18 PM EST up reply actions
lyne and I missed a sweet ride.....
We instead were stuck in a massive traffic jam through Santa Barbara the night before….wah!
Nikki shared the streaming audio of the race story with us….very cool!!
I am so with you Dan.
"I won! I won! I don't have to go to school anymore." -- Eddy Merckx, after winning his first bike race
lol.. Problem is..
I had a hard time logging in to the tracker.. Didn’t work too fluently in Europe…….
Crashdan: "Veni Vidi Vici beats Wing Kong Exchange... … and I’ll change my signature to a backwards smile for a month."
Veni Vidi Vici beats Txirrindulariak and I win a date..
It even "worked" for me
in the sense that a lot of the time I had slideshow with audio. Any problems was due to the fact that I had such abysmal bandwidth though. My internet at home is basically connected via the plumbing.
But the Tourtracker worked.
Ok ok.. Just Holland!
Know some other guys we had to buffer for 10 a 15 minutes… I did get the streaming but lost the contact some times
Crashdan: "Veni Vidi Vici beats Wing Kong Exchange... … and I’ll change my signature to a backwards smile for a month."
Veni Vidi Vici beats Txirrindulariak and I win a date..
You do know you can't stuff Edamer in the network-port to make the internet faster, right?
That just a dutch urban myth.
damn
how do you do that? In following that damn race, all I want is a feed to race radio whilst racing from start to finish. You can teach me how to do that I will carve your name on Sierra Road (or something epic).
I am in awe……..
You missed a fun little car ride right there. :-)
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
I do a damn good impression of Frankie Andreu laughing if I do say so myself...
… but I don’t want to get off onto a funny tangent on this particular thread.
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
Dear Rebecca and Harold:
Can you please get someone to reply to my three emails of Saturday, yesterday and again today? I’ve received no response from anyone.
"It's official. For the next four years, it will be pronounced 'nuclear' " --Seth Meyers
CTV now editing its own Wiki entry
Getting rid of information about Mr. Brydon, and deleting any reference to problems with the service (including the link here). See, e.g., this.
Look, you dicks, Wikipedia is not your PR tool. That entry was written in a neutral tone and cited before you go a hold of it.
my 2 cents
disclaimer: I don’t subscribe to ctv
I can see why people are angry, but it does seem as though Rebecca’s post is honest, informative…and not a form letter.
I also have some sympathy for Harold’s explanation of why Rebecca’s post is coming only now: they wanted to meet, spend some time figuring out what was really wrong and how they were going to respond to it, before responding to complaints. That seems fair enough to me: I’d rather have someone spend some time to get at the root of a problem than respond immediately but less meaningfully.
actions louder than words
i can’t even get the free videos to work properly.
with a huge attrition rate, no new members (i want to join so badly but…), and their sponsors being bombarded with complaints, how is this company still operating?
as a business person, if my product sucked and i faced a massive uphill battle, i would cancel the date with a beautiful woman and work my ass off. get a proper product, let the improved version speak for itself, and quit being a douche. with a performing product, subscribers would double…..although, at current levels, i suspect that is not difficult. then, after a successful revamp and making more money, i would go on a date with a fckng gorgeous woman, not merely a beautiful woman….and then show her my steed,,,,,a cervelo.
by bikepig on Mar 3, 2009 4:40 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
What if the beautiful woman was
a venture capitalist?
Just sayin’
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
hehe
BTW – there is a simpler solution to getting race video than cycling TV. Learn Flemish …. they seem to have lots of feeds available.
formerly known as cyclingchallenge
This is my spring project
right after I learn English
CYCLING TV SUCKS. DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY
Beware - they will bill you automatically unless you cancel recurring payments... Login to PayPal -> select MyAccount -> Profile -> Recurring Payments and cancel Cycling TV. Check your history to confirm that it worked. Then crack open a fine Belgian beer and toast your future happiness.
If I were queen
Sporza feed would not be geo-restricted. Best cycling coverage on the planet for these races.
(Sorry, Signor Cassani, but it’s true, you know ;-) )
I for one would vote for you for Queen
I think you’d make a dandy one.
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
+100
CYCLING TV SUCKS. DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY
Beware - they will bill you automatically unless you cancel recurring payments... Login to PayPal -> select MyAccount -> Profile -> Recurring Payments and cancel Cycling TV. Check your history to confirm that it worked. Then crack open a fine Belgian beer and toast your future happiness.
you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.
"Never swing a small stick. " Andy Hampsten
I have no idea where you got that quote...
… but I love it.
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
My dissapointment
knows no bounds.
And this makes me feel better for missing some of the others that get tossed around this place.
"Never swing a small stick. " Andy Hampsten
Oh Dan,........
I think a temporary shunning might be called for here. That’s really unforgivable.
Here’s where you leave a follow up comment, like “I’ll be back” and then Hons says “where did you get that quote, it sounds so ominous”, and then checks back in and says “like, wow, I can’t believe I missed that” and then someone else says “man, that’s almost a shunning offense” and then eventually we get locked into a missing-obvious-quotes-apology-shunning-cycle and Podium Cafe as we know it gets sucked down a wormhole and we end up in a parallel universe where CTV works better than the ATOC Tour Tracker and Rabobank sweeps Flanders and PR.
And none of us want that.
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
what movie is that from?
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
You ...
… Pompous, Stuck up, Snot nosed, Giant, English, Twerp, Scumbag, Fuckface, Dickhead, Asshole!
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
How very interesting. You're a true vulgarian, aren't you?
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
You asshole! You stupid, stiff, pompous, English...!
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
I'm really really sorry, I apologise unreservedly.
"The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed."
"ow do you know he's the king?"
“well.. ’es not down in the shit wif us is ’e?”
by Christopher See on Mar 4, 2009 4:55 PM EST up reply actions
Only if you give him back during the Italian races!
Belgians so can’t do Italian races. Lacking in drama.
Now… Since I’m queen, who do I talk to about this pesky geo-restricting anyway? Really, this thingy has to go.
dit ees
een drama…
CQRanking.com, you complete me.
by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 3, 2009 6:51 PM EST up reply actions
You're almost there! ;)
Crashdan: "Veni Vidi Vici beats Wing Kong Exchange... … and I’ll change my signature to a backwards smile for a month."
Veni Vidi Vici beats Txirrindulariak and I win a date..
Oh, naive Ones...
Remember post Lance and no more live Giro coverage on OLN/Vs.? Makes it ’06 probably? Maybe ’07. Signed up for the cycling.tv Giro “package” at a fairly significant fee. After trying to follow the race for a few stages, gave up due to the poor quality and constantly frozen stream, and requested a refund via email. No such luck.
After an exchange of emails including excuses and promises of newly improved service, my request for a free trail period for a future race was countered with a “you pay, if you don’t like it we will refund…” Uh, don’t think so. No more cycling.tv for me until ATOC last month. Tempted by their email offer of free “coverage”, I did want to hear what big maggie had to say.
After following the remarkably good coverage on the ATOC tour tracker for a few stages, I decided to try cycling.tv’s free “coverage”. Same shit, different day. No, make that – same shit, different year.
To be fair, a few races worked pretty OK at the end of last season.
I really thought they were getting the hang of it. Someone must have decided to add some more bells and whistles, and the got a whacked by a whistle in the bells.
Full responsibility, huh?
Well, taking responsibility isn’t helping me to see the races.
If they were truly sorry, I’d expect them to take something off their subscription rate (or extend the subscription for, say, an extra month). But nothing, nada. Just an apology (to go with the scores of apologies over the years).
Rather than trying to contact the sponsors, it may be more effective to put together a group to contact the actual race organizers to ask them to consider giving the rights to others. At the very least, they should not give CTV exclusive English-language coverage. I imagine that a little competition may actually do more than anything else to deal with this.
Thanks, Rebecca, but...
the fact that you’re writing the apology is wrong. If management told you or asked you to do it, shame on them – they’re the ones who owe us an apology, not you. If you volunteered to do it, we love you even more for doing so, but it’s still not your responsibility.
I haven’t read the other comments yet, so I know I’ll repeat what others have said – there are no excuses for these issues. CTV has or should have known about them for years. Other streaming services simply don’t have these issues, at least not nearly as often. And the routine silence from CTV is deafening. So why can’t or won’t CTV get its act together?
I was one of the lucky few who only had a brief problem on Saturday, but I’ve experienced many problems in the past. You can see from reading the posts that there are many people either not renewing or not subscribing at all. Maybe CTV is getting so many subscribers that you’re not worried about dissatisfied customers, but I doubt it. CTV’s lack of service and lack of customer service to be a cancer that’s spreading throughout your potential market. If CTV goes belly up, we all lose, and no one wants that.
So please tell your management that the people paying their salaries demand that they stop hiding behind you and that they treat us like (a) they want to provide the service we pay for, and then b) provide us quality customer service w/o screw ups and excuses. If they can’t afford to make that commitment, then be honest and tell us that.
Otherwise, I fear that CTV will be a short-lived experience.
Kudos to you and Anthony and Brian, and know that the vast majority of us thoroughly enjoy your efforts.
Thinking hard - really hard - of something witty to say....
It's a form letter
This post isn’t a personal apology from Rebecca, it’s a form letter from cycling.tv.
I got the exact same form letter by email. Didn’t everyone?
Actually, the form letter I got by email differs from Rebecca’s post in one way. In the first line, it says, “We are aware of the intermittent video streaming quality issues…”
Maybe Rebecca realized that calling cycling.tv’s problems “intermittent” is an insult to the intelligence of those of us who have had regular video streaming quality issues with cycling.tv for the past three seasons, so she omitted that word.
by Susie Hartigan on Mar 4, 2009 1:52 PM EST up reply actions
I just checked my email and see that I have the same apology
So while it looks like Rebecca simply posted the message here, I think my point – that the management should show their faces and be humble – is still valid.
Maybe the management is smarter than we think and they realize that Rebecca has a reservoir of goodwill from us and is therefore by far the better conduit than they. However, it’s still unfair to stick Rebecca on point and let her take the rounds in the chest. There’s only so much that she can do – and she appears to be doing it – to absorb the animosity that her employers have created.
Enough on this for a while. I had a great bike ride yesterday – 45 minutes into the screaming, howling, West Texas wind, followed by a nice & fast return ride with the wind at my back. Here’s hoping everyone was as lucky as me.
Thinking hard - really hard - of something witty to say....
Rebecca
Surprisingly, the new service and interface has been working pretty well for me. Imagine my surprise though, when my yearly $99.00 auto-renew through pay-pal was not posted to my C-TV account and I could not get in to watch the race. I have sent two e-mails with no response from C-TV to this issue. Since it appears that no one at at C-TV is going to respond, I have opened a Pay-Pal dispute for services not received after payment.
So, I am one of the people here who the service actually works for but my renewal money has not been applied to my account so I can get the service I paid for. It is mind boggling.
this is the part of it that has always clinched my non subscription
the service not working sucks
but the apparent complete lack of customer service (as evidenced by doens of you) ……. evil and unforgivable
formerly known as cyclingchallenge
Thank you Rebecca
and Aric at C-TV customer service for resolving this issue. My C-TV account has been updated. I appreciate it.
Same thing happened to me last year
auto renewal and then when I went to watch the first race it wouldn’t let me. I canceled immediately. I’m not sorry that CTV is a bunch of buffoons. I want it to work, but they need to give me something to prove it. I propose they put Paris-Roubaix on for free on all streams and if it works then we all subscribe. If not then they go away and quit teasing us.
by TC_ on Mar 4, 2009 7:49 PM EST up reply actions
Foolish me, I thought there was going to be some interaction between C-TV and it's users on this thread...
… you know, beyond Harold up there and the “tone which he really shouldn’t have taken”.
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
Hi Jens
Hi there,
I am documenting and passing on each and every one of your comments.
I’m sure you will agree there is little point in me repeatedly apologising on behalf of Cycling TV in response to each post, as you have all stated, at this point this is not what you want to hear. I completely understand your frustrations and truely want to help where I can which is why I am trying to communicate your views to the people that can make a difference.
I sincerely appreaciate the constructive manner in which you have all directed your feedback towards me and your continued consideration to me on a personal level.
Any specific questions, please do leave them here and I will endeavour to respond with a useful answer where I can.
Best regards,
Rebecca
Thanks Rebecca... here are a few questions...
1) Can Cycling.TV guarantee that the platform will be the best it can be by Flanders (as indicated by my post above)? That means no hour long fights to log in, and solid, unbuffered, streams to everyone with broadband access regardless of physical location. We understand that some of us have better or worse bandwidth than others, but if 1200 works at the beginning of the race, it should work at the end of the race too.
2) If Cycling.TV is unable to deliver their content successfully by Flanders, will cycling.tv GUARANTEE full refunds for any customer that wishes to cancel their subscription at that time with no hassle?
Dude... why WOULDN'T Thor ride the chicken?
Even if we may not sound it, we do appreciate that you are making an effort
Like crashdan I would like to ask a specific question.
Would it be possible for CTV to post a list of this seasons races that you have at the moment secured rights to? Not races that you have the ambition to stream, but those where you have a written agreement in place with the raceorganizers. The info I would like also, are what races are included in the different packages and what races are affected by geo-restrictions.
I’m assuming you have some technical difficulties posting it on your own website but I’m certain Chris wouldn’t mind if you used a fanpost on the PdC for this purpose.
Hi guys
Thank you for these comments and questions. I cannot immediately respond with personal assurance on all of these points but I have passed them on and will come back to you as soon as I can.
What I can answer is your point regarding using fanposts here on PdC. I’d actually like to thank Chris for all his support and allowing me to post various details on here, and will look to do so more regularly in the name of effectively communicating with you guys as much as possible, including geo-restrictions and package information.
Dear Rebecca: Hi.
I’ve been unable to log in to watch KBK since Sunday. I have sent 4 emails complaining about this, asking it to be fixed, and have received only one canned, prewritten form letter apology that everyone else got.
Meanwhile, I still canot log in. Please, can you get a real human being to help me? The exact error message is: Current account cannot watch video, please login again. Thank you.
"It's official. For the next four years, it will be pronounced 'nuclear' " --Seth Meyers
Thank you. I am now able to log in. Appreciate your help.
"It's official. For the next four years, it will be pronounced 'nuclear' " --Seth Meyers
Heh
You’d think that these issues could be resolved on Cycling.tv’s site and by email, rather than on ours.
Bizarre company.
Glad you got it settled at least, Ruthann.
I propose we start charging CTV for using our site to settle their customer issues
How does $99 per year sound, for the North American package?
*Please note – to resolve your European Customer issues, you will have to log in to www.Jens.podiumcafe.com/Sweden. An annual subscription is 150 Kroner
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
Ok - so make that your quarterly charge
Do I have to write your business plan too?
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
I can hear you!
"I didn't look for him and I didn't see him. If you base your race on another rider, most of the time you lose."
Tom Boonen
Not so bad is it?
Tons of people here are subscribers, they come here to complain, so the ctv rep comes here too, meet them on their home turf as it were, go to them. Seems ok to me.
by plinytheelder on Mar 4, 2009 11:43 PM EST up reply actions
You seem really nice
So why don’t you get a job working somewhere decent? Where you can make a difference, do something other than apologise for your employer. Life is too short for this sort of stuff. It is. Really.
Even before last weekend I had dismissed the possibility of paying for the, ahem, “quality of service” provided by ctv. Now I can’t imagine why I would want to. I’d rather take a bundle of £5 notes and shove it through a shredder. Same result, it would just mean less time watching it disappear.
Formerly known on PdC as ruralwales.
I don't ever use cycling.tv.. It never works for me but I have sporza so I don't care
But I have a suggestion.. It seems you have no idea where your problems are.. You are dealing 3 years with streaming problems and like it said somewhere it’s some of a Geo-restricted thing.. Isn’t it an idea to send a questionnaire to your customers by mail where you ask
If they get the streaming? Where they live? When they logged in? etc..
Maybe you have done this and I feel dumb to tell you this but it’s just a suggestion…
1) You know exactly where your problems is..
2) Your customers feel like they cared about them…
Crashdan: "Veni Vidi Vici beats Wing Kong Exchange... … and I’ll change my signature to a backwards smile for a month."
Veni Vidi Vici beats Txirrindulariak and I win a date..
Well if your going to start on Root Cause Analysis, then let’s bust out an A3 and start with an Ishitawa Diagram.
While your idea seems possible, it may not actually be the root cause, or there may be another issue which can be fixed that may create a greater impact on the end product in a faster way, or at a cheaper price.
The only way to really solve this issue is for those who have the responsability to do so to become honest and commit to getting their hand dirty.
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