John bought a really thoughtful Christmas present for his dad, a basketball fan: an NBA League Pass subscription, and a Roku so he could watch games on his TV instead of huddling in front of the computer. At least, this gift seemed like a really great idea until the League Pass app just stopped working. John and his dad aren’t the only ones who have this problem, but no one at Roku or at the NBA seems to care about the poor, game-less customers. They’ve already got fans’ money, after all.

I bought the NBA League Pass for my father for Christmas, but I knew he wouldn’t enjoy the games as much on his computer so I also bought him a Roku device that the NBA League Pass works with. (As you can see here, this is an advertised feature.)

On Christmas day we set it up and it worked okay. The app was poorly coded, forcing you to relogin every time you switched games, but at least it worked. However on Wednesday the 4th, when my dad attempted to login through the Roku, the League Pass app said the user name and password were incorrect. Since I could still login through the computer with the same information, I knew there was something wrong with the app. I figured it was a one day thing, glitches happen, so I left it alone. The next time there was a game on my dad wanted to watch was two days later. Again we tried to log in, but it still gave the same message. I tried everything from resetting the Roku to changing my password but nothing worked. Frustrated, I searched the internet and found I was not the only one with this problem. (See: http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=45976&start=90)

So I sent the NBA League Pass support an email on the 6th. I honestly expected the problem to be fixed even before I got a response. I was wrong. On the 10th (Now on day 6 of not getting a service I was paying for) I got this generic response:

“We apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing with NBA League Pass Broadband through Roku. Our technical team is working on a solution and we will update you as soon as possible.”

I know write to you on the evening of the 11th my father still cannot log on to his League Pass account on the Roku device. Neither the NBA nor Roku seems to care (as you can see by the generic responses on the Roku forums thread to multiple complaints). Meanwhile I am paying $109 for a subscription to a service (not including the cost of the Roku I bought specifically and only for this use) that I cannot use.

The season has only 15 weeks remaining, it’s not like this is a lifetime subscription. I have already lost over 5% of the content I paid for and neither the NBA nor Roku seems to be in no hurry to fix it. In fact neither party has even publicly commented that there is a problem, nor have they privately offered to refund any money for the content they did not provide. Could you please bring some light to this problem. Clearly the NBA and Roku don’t care about their paying customers whose money they already have, but maybe some bad publicity and the thought of lost future revenue will incentivize them to actually deliver a service they charge for.

If streaming to your PC still works, then they’re still providing the service of beaming games to users’ homes, but not the advertised service of beaming them to their televisions. Get on it, NBA.

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