earlgreytea68 | A Day of Digital Media (Reply)

There is a severe thunderstorm happening an hour from me. In Rhode Island, we would call that “weather in Boston” and just go on with our lives. Here, because my viewing region is ENORMOUS, my local NBC affiliate has decided I must watch the Doppler radar. That’s all they’re doing: showing us different iterations of the Doppler radar. It seems like we could just do this in the corner or something. It doesn’t seem like we need to be watching this. But no – they have decided we need to watch this instead of the Olympics. I have seriously been watching this Doppler radar for 45 minutes at this point.

So I’ve given up. I have DirecTV, and that theoretically is supposed to give me the ability to stream, so maybe I can stream the NBC broadcast. Except when I got to DirecTV and log in and choose “Watch,” it tells me they can’t process my request.

So now I’m like, Idk, do I need to sign up for some special account to watch online? How does this work? Why don’t they explain it to me? I try to go to the FAQs and all it says is that with my DirecTV account I can stream live television, with a link, that when I click tells they can’t process my request.

So then I’m like, Idk, is their website down maybe? I try to find someone from DirecTV to chat with but their chat is busy, so I decide to call tech support. I call tech support, and get into their automated system.

Automated bot: How can I help you?

Me: I’m trying to stream live television online and it’s unable to process my request and I’m trying to figure out if your website is down.

Automated bot: I understand. DirecTV is excited to announced a new product: DirecTV Now! Would you like to hear more about it.

Me: No.

Automated bot: How can I help you?

Me: …I’m trying to figure out if your website is down.

Automated bot: Do you want to hear about DirecTV Now?

Me: No. I want to talk to a person about your website not working.

Automated bot: Have I helped you with your issue?

Me: Yeah, whatever, thanks.

So I hung up and asked the internet and they helped me find a stream. THANK YOU, INTERNET.

This on top of the fact that I’ve been fighting with Facebook for literally months about all their weirdness. I requested a month ago that they delete my account, and they confirmed that they would and it might take them two weeks. It’s a month later and I’m still getting emails from them. I assumed this was just Facebook being Facebook and never leaving you alone, so I unsubscribed from the emails. Except this morning I got ANOTHER email (despite having unsubscribed) that said my cousin managed to send me a message…which doesn’t sound like my account has been deleted. So I thought, “Hey, I’ll just contact Facebook and ask again if they can delete my account and also stop sending me emails” (btw, under U.S. law, you’re entitled to be able to unsubscribe from mailing lists and have your wishes respected). Except that, well, have you ever tried to contact Facebook without logging into Facebook??? There’s no way to do it. They have no “contact” link on their homepage. It’s the strangest thing and so sketchy. I ended up tweeting at them. I’ve gotten no response yet. I’ll give it a couple of days and then follow up.

All in all, today has just been a day of so much corporate fail. CAPITALISM FTW.