I want my MLB.TV

Today it rained.

This in and of itself isn't necessarily important other than the fact it meant my kid couldn't go out and play today. So there we were, stuck inside and like most people in south Georgia, we figured we'd watch the Pittsburgh/Baltimore game, because it was raining and that seemed like the logical thing to do.

Unfortunately, when we went to mlb.tv to watch the game, it said we were blacked out.

For the uninitiated, blackouts for Major League Baseball are essentially the way the league ensures that the cable channels that paid millions (and in some cases, billions) of dollars for the rights to show the games are able to recoup their investment. You've got to have cable or satellite (and pay the fees for that channel through your bill) for access to the game and the commercials that come with it. Obviously, this is usually for local teams, though local can be a tricky thing to figure out when you live in, say, Iowa where there are as many as six teams that are blacked out due to its proximity to those teams.

Needless to say, the Pirates and Orioles are not the local teams for me and shouldn't have been blacked out. So like anyone else would do, I took to social media to get the problem resolved. I tweeted the MLB Fan Support account and let them know there was an issue. Within two minutes, I'd received a reply asking for my account information and how they could help. After about six messages back and forth and maybe five minutes, the issue was resolved and we could watch the game.

It was phenomenal service. Courteous, polite, responsive. At one point they needed my IP address and when asking for it, provided a link for me to find out what it was. 

There's no overarching theme for this post. No grand lesson I'm trying to get across. Just some praise for some really good customer service.

Oh, and as for the game, it went in to a rain delay about 15 minutes after we turned it on and we ended up finding something else to watch.