YouTube TV Offers Viewers A Free Week Following World Cup Outage
YouTube TV is offering its sincerest apologies, as well as a refund roughly equal to one week’s use, following an outage during the World Cup, Engadget is reporting.
This week, YouTube TV, the subscription version of the popular video-sharing site, went down. And it went down at the worst possible time: during the England-Croatia World Cup semifinal. It’s not clear how many subscribers were affected, but nevertheless, for football fans lacking any other means of watching the game, it had to have been intensely frustrating.
At the time, YouTube admitted that there was a problem – which was likely of little comfort to those missing the game.
“Hey everyone — sincere apologies for streaming issues with YouTube TV. The timing is horrible but we’re working to be up and running again ASAP!”
An hour later they were back – but by then viewers had missed an hour of the game.
“And we’re back! Enjoy the rest of #ENGCRO by going to http://tv.youtube.com/live. We are so sorry about the service interruption and we understand your frustration. If you continue to experience issues let @TeamYouTube know.”
Apologies aside, several Twitter users were less than happy, with many asking how they could cancel the service.
Yeah I agree. A service is only as good as it can stay up and running. No point in paying for a service that fails during a big game.
— Lon (@H_Sensa) July 11, 2018
Now that the dust has settled, YouTube TV is offering its customers a refund. Depending on the plan users pay for, they should get a refund for around $8-10, roughly equivalent to the cost of one week’s service. According to The Verge, several users are reporting that the email from YouTube TV is going into their spam folders – so if you’re a subscriber and you’re wondering where your refund email is, check there first.
YouTube TV also reminds users that the England-Croatia game should be available in users’ libraries, although there are two problems with this. First, as it was a live sporting event that ended two days ago, what’s the point? And second, unless you’re a Croatia fan, why would you want to live through England’s painful loss again?
This is not the first time YouTube TV has gone down at an inopportune time. The service also went down during the NBA Eastern Conference Finals earlier this year. It’s not clear if subscribers were offered a refund at that time.
YouTube TV was launched in February 2017 as a way to offer subscribers an alternative to cable. The service provides access to the major U.S. networks as well as certain live sporting events.
