Eurosport Player

daniel_b

cq20 wrote:

So every month Eurosport take payment from my debit card and confirm this by email and yet when I log in to my account they tell me that I have no subscription. Given that I have "No Active Subscription" according to them, I can't change the card or even cancel it. Every month it just rolls forward. All emails, whatever you say, to Customer Care get the same reply saying that they'll get back within 24 hours (they don't) and that they have problems (true) which they are fixing (untrue).

So I've just spoken to my bank who have cancelled all future payments to Eurosport from my debit card (I was on a rolling monthly deal with the minimum period completed). They've made a note on file so that they can tell Eurosport to bog off if they complain.

Bye bye Eurosport - never again.

Hmmm, i have the same thing - 12 months ran up until August, but as per you, says no Active subscription.

As it happens I took out the £19.99 12 month deal back in February or whenever it was, so they were running in parallel, so am just using that one, and have now instructed my bank to cancel it from next month - stupidly just assumed it would happen with no intervention, well especially when I saw the 'no active subscription' status.

daniel_b

Finally had a reply from their support.....

Dear Dan,

Following your query regarding your Eurosport Player subscription.

First of all, I am very sorry for the late reply, we are currently dealing with an unusual number of queries following our latest update.

A system maintenance has been carried out recently to ensure a proper functionality of our platform. It may havecaused some minor technical issues affecting a number of users. This is a temporarily display issue and will be fixed soon.

We would like to inform you that, according to our data, there is an active Monthly Pass associated with your account. It has been automatically renewed on 22.09.2017.

The subscription is active and you should be able to access the service.

Please let us know if you need any assistance with managing the current subscription or accessing the account.

Feel free to contact me should you have any other queries.

I have replied to the effect that i have instructed my bank to not allow any money to be taken on a monthly basis, and also re-iterated the fact that when I logged on it stated there was no active subscription, and that as a result there was no possibility of making a cancellation request.

Expect this will take another 2-3 weeks to get a reply, and they will probably say I owe them money etc etc.

@cq20 - where did you get with your situation?

Wish I had taken a screenshot of it saying 'No active subscription' now - don't suppose anyone has one out there they could send to me?

Don't want to log in to it, as it will then show I have logged in, and I reckon will give them ammunition.

blazing_saddles

I'm now having problems with having to log onto this site all the time, rather than being automatically logging in.

One issue I have with the player is that if you miss a race and want to catch up via on demand, you invariably get an spoilered by an interview with the race winner, or a clip of the finish.
Kind of defeats the object.

qube

This any good?

I had the same problem.

daniel_b

Blazing Saddles wrote:

I'm now having problems with having to log onto this site all the time, rather than being automatically logging in.

One issue I have with the player is that if you miss a race and want to catch up via on demand, you invariably get an spoilered by an interview with the race winner, or a clip of the finish.
Kind of defeats the object.

My other account seems to log on ok, but I totally get you on the spoilers front, they have made it a lot worse in that manner - you have to keep remembering to go to 'on demand' or whatever they call it, and even then it often switches back to 'All' and gives the game away :-(

Qube wrote:

This any good?

I had the same problem.

Genius, thankyou so much Qube - can I ask is yours still in progress, or did you have it resolved?

What did you do about payments going out that were not meant to be doing so?

qube

It was an ongoing issue over 4 weeks, I decided to unsubscribe after the Tour.

After 9 reasonably polite emails to the customer service address, I felt like I was being fobbed off with their autoreply.

All I wanted was to unsubscribe and was faced with this screen and no way of doing so.

They take money from the your card, so the only way to stop this was to get a new card. I didn't as why should I?

Eventually I started a more threatening stance, giving them the name of my solicitor etc and saying it was actually stealing as there is no way to stop the money from my account.

I heard back within hours of the last email with a sappy apology and confirmation of cancellation.

Never again.

cq20

Daniel B

@cq20 - where did you get with your situation?

I’ll tell you tomorrow! After the bank told me that they would decline all further payments to Eurosport, I sent yet another email to Eurosport and put “Account Termination” again in the heading. This time I actually got a non-automated response saying that it would be cancelled at their end when the current month’s subscription ran out. I don’t know if the bank had been in contact with them or not.

So hopefully I will be free of Eurosport (the Hotel California of the online subscription world) as of the end of today.

daniel_b

Thankyou all,

I feared the worst looking at the above, but have just had a reply to the e-mail I sent over the weekend stating that they have cancelled my subscription and refunded me for the last payment.

Apparently, and this is the kicker, you can only cancel the subscription in the 48 hours leading up to when it will automatically renew.

I had assumed, I don't think that stupidly, that once the final of the 12 payments had been made, I would be able to log in and cancel it, but they clearly do this to try and get people to stay subscribing - poor practice imho.

I hope everyone else has a successful end to their battles.

cq20

At last I am Eurosport free. No charge against my debit card and no email telling me that they've renewed my subscription, despite my clear instructions to cancel it

if (and it is a big if) I ever decide to subscribe to Eurosport in future then I'll look at doing it through an intermediary such as iTunes where I can cancel the subscription without having to fight it out with Eurosport Customer Care (?!). I actually use iTunes vouchers to maintain a positive balance with iTunes. It means that I have to fund things upfront but iTunes/Apple don't have and have never had any of my card details. At least that way any damage is limited to the balance amount.

rick_chasey

So I’m looking into whether it’s still worth paying for sky given a lot of TV I seem to want to watch is on Netflix which I can’t bring myself to pay for as well.

What’s people’s experience with other TV providers, Vrigin & BT? I assume both have Eurosport 1&2 HD.

They seem slightly cheaper.

Is the Eurosport player with a chrome cast dongle thing reliable enough to not worry about the channel? And is it in HD?

Also what are people’s general takes on paid for TV generally and what are their cheaper set ups.

bobmcstuff

We have Virgin Media. Used to have Sky but moved house to an area with Virgin fiber so switched (definitely worth it - 130 Mbps just now). We don't pay for any sports packages, in fact I think we are on the most basic package.

Regards Virgin, the Tivo box thing is very clunky, the GUI and loading is much clunkier compared to Sky. It does have a Netflix app and iPlayer etc built in but it's so crap to use I just cast from my phone.

I have a subscription to Eurosport player, which is fine for my cycling needs. I had a few teething troubles when they updated the app but it seems to be fine now. Casts to my Chromecast no problem, and the quality is generally very good (although obviously depends on your internet). If you go to a Rapha cafe to watch any races they are just streaming Eurosport to the TVs and it is good enough for that. I'm currently watching the men's downhill skiing from Bormio and it is streaming fine in full HD.

The biggest problem is when they make random updates to the app and it craps out for a while, and their customer service is effectively nonexistent (plenty of complaints upthread). I also get annoyed that replays are only available for limited periods. However compared to paying for Sky Sports it seems reasonable.

I also have subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime and Now TV (the Sky one). Now TV gives us access to the Sky shows we miss with basic Virgin (primarily GoT...). I believe Now TV allows you to do pay per view on sports but I have never tried it. The app is pretty slick. Netflix is very good, their own shows seem to be getting better and better - Netflix allows you to get multiple screens, for £9.99 a month we get up to 4 simultaneous users so both my parents and my fiance's parents have a login.

Amazon Prime has some good stuff on it and you can buy/rent films which aren't included, so you can get pretty much anything you can think of. Main problem with Amazon is they are having a playground dispute with Google at the moment and you can't cast to Chromecast from Amazon, so I need to plug my laptop into HDMI.

If I was going to get rid of anything it would be the Virgin TV, unfortunately that is packaged with the internet. I hardly ever watch live TV other than cycling and you can get live TV off the main channels through their respective player apps so it's essentially pointless to have a pay TV package. If I wasn't tied to virgin media, freeview and subscriptions to streaming services would be more than adequate (we can get an internet only package I think but it isn't much cheaper).

I know this is quite rambling, any Q's let me know...

Vino'sGhost

Ive ditched sky, and gone with BT which has eurosport and I havent missed it and Ive saved a ton of cash.

I also have netflix. I did want to watch game of thrones so just rented NOW tv for a month.

If the eurosport app on my smart TV worked, Id ditch BT too. since i mostly watch netflix and terrestrial TV

gsk82

I assume there'll be a load of readers whos filthy cheep one year subscription will be ending in January. I hope they come up with something similar this year, so another dispute with sky would be handy.

47p2

gsk82 wrote:

I assume there'll be a load of readers whos filthy cheep one year subscription will be ending in January. I hope they come up with something similar this year, so another dispute with sky would be handy.

You missed the boat, they had a 99p subscription on Black Friday. I still had 6 weeks left on my subscription but at 99p I decided it would be best to take out a new membership and loose my other 6 weeks.

rick_chasey

Vino'sGhost wrote:

Ive ditched sky, and gone with BT which has eurosport and I havent missed it and Ive saved a ton of cash.

I also have netflix. I did want to watch game of thrones so just rented NOW tv for a month.

If the eurosport app on my smart TV worked, Id ditch BT too. since i mostly watch netflix and terrestrial TV

I’ll ignore your bad taste in game of thrones (as someone else put it, it’s a version of LOTR written by Peter Stringfellow).

How much did moving to BT save? Did that cover the cost of Netflix?

sherer

Biggest issue I have with ditching Virgin is scheduling recording.. I work away a lot and so need stuff recorded for when I come back.. if I'm away for two weeks I'm never sure if the classics will still be available on the app

bobmcstuff

Rick Chasey wrote:

Vino'sGhost wrote:

Ive ditched sky, and gone with BT which has eurosport and I havent missed it and Ive saved a ton of cash.

I also have netflix. I did want to watch game of thrones so just rented NOW tv for a month.

If the eurosport app on my smart TV worked, Id ditch BT too. since i mostly watch netflix and terrestrial TV

I’ll ignore your bad taste in game of thrones (as someone else put it, it’s a version of LOTR written by Peter Stringfellow).

How much did moving to BT save? Did that cover the cost of Netflix?

Our old Sky was 55 a month and Virgin is 45. This more than pays for the cheapest version of netflix (1 screen at 5.99). This was internet and tv, the virgin internet is miles and miles ahead of sky.

rick_chasey

sherer wrote:

Biggest issue I have with ditching Virgin is scheduling recording.. I work away a lot and so need stuff recorded for when I come back.. if I'm away for two weeks I'm never sure if the classics will still be available on the app

Is there no way to remotely set the box to record, like you can with sky?

rick_chasey

bobmcstuff wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Vino'sGhost wrote:

Ive ditched sky, and gone with BT which has eurosport and I havent missed it and Ive saved a ton of cash.

I also have netflix. I did want to watch game of thrones so just rented NOW tv for a month.

If the eurosport app on my smart TV worked, Id ditch BT too. since i mostly watch netflix and terrestrial TV

I’ll ignore your bad taste in game of thrones (as someone else put it, it’s a version of LOTR written by Peter Stringfellow).

How much did moving to BT save? Did that cover the cost of Netflix?

Our old Sky was 55 a month and Virgin is 45. This more than pays for the cheapest version of netflix (1 screen at 5.99). This was internet and tv, the virgin internet is miles and miles ahead of sky.

Thanks.

sherer

Rick Chasey wrote:

sherer wrote:

Biggest issue I have with ditching Virgin is scheduling recording.. I work away a lot and so need stuff recorded for when I come back.. if I'm away for two weeks I'm never sure if the classics will still be available on the app

Is there no way to remotely set the box to record, like you can with sky?

with my current Virgin box I can, but if I ditch that and go streaming \ internet only then dont think that is possible. Might be possible with a media centre PC but dont really want to leave something like that running for two weeks while im away

Vino'sGhost

Rick Chasey wrote:

Vino'sGhost wrote:

Ive ditched sky, and gone with BT which has eurosport and I havent missed it and Ive saved a ton of cash.

I also have netflix. I did want to watch game of thrones so just rented NOW tv for a month.

If the eurosport app on my smart TV worked, Id ditch BT too. since i mostly watch netflix and terrestrial TV

I’ll ignore your bad taste in game of thrones (as someone else put it, it’s a version of LOTR written by Peter Stringfellow).

How much did moving to BT save? Did that cover the cost of Netflix?

Saved about £40 a month since i had Netflix as well Net flix is about £6.99 (I think) Ive got the 4K version though i wouldnt bother with that if i had to subscribe again.

Vino'sGhost

In any case SKY sucks and they're all PED addicted. It's official.

Vino'sGhost

Rick Chasey wrote:

sherer wrote:

Biggest issue I have with ditching Virgin is scheduling recording.. I work away a lot and so need stuff recorded for when I come back.. if I'm away for two weeks I'm never sure if the classics will still be available on the app

Is there no way to remotely set the box to record, like you can with sky?

The BT box is good for recording

daniel_b

sherer wrote:

Biggest issue I have with ditching Virgin is scheduling recording.. I work away a lot and so need stuff recorded for when I come back.. if I'm away for two weeks I'm never sure if the classics will still be available on the app

Do you not have internet access when you are working away? Perfect time to watch I would have thought.

I can't recall how long the catchup programmes stay available, might only be 2 weeks.
Shame it is not longer, or that there is no download option as in iplayer functionality.

sherer

Daniel B wrote:

sherer wrote:

Biggest issue I have with ditching Virgin is scheduling recording.. I work away a lot and so need stuff recorded for when I come back.. if I'm away for two weeks I'm never sure if the classics will still be available on the app

Do you not have internet access when you are working away? Perfect time to watch I would have thought.

I can't recall how long the catchup programmes stay available, might only be 2 weeks.
Shame it is not longer, or that there is no download option as in iplayer functionality.

I'm usually on a different time zone.. once we get 100 plus of us in a hotel there's little chance of streaming anything..

That's why I still keep the Virgin box.. need to do a bit more research maybe an Apple TV box may work better.. don't really want to keep a full media PC running while I'm away.. sure there is a solution out there somewhere