Setanta Ranter

Today your super soaraway World of Spurt is proud to welcome guest columnist and Spurs fan (though we’ll try not to hold that against him) the redoubtable Stevie B for an impassioned plea on where your sporting subscription should or possibly shouldn't go this year

The football season hasn’t even started yet, but already a great black cloud of doom and despondency hangs over it. Which first appeared when the “official curtain-raiser” allegedly took place last weekend: the gloriously meaningless Community Shield (or whatever it’s called this year). Ordinarily, I’d watch that game eagerly, but there was no chance of that this year – it was televised by Setanta Sports, the TV equivalent of a house of cards. And having endured the misfortune of being a Setanta Sports victim, er customer, last year, there was no way I was going to make the same mistake twice. You, too, might be interested to hear of my aggravation at the hands of the most inept Irishmen since the last time the wrong drive got tarmacked.

As a Tottenham fan, I spotted one month, early last season, when Setanta was televising two Spurs games. Thinking I was being clever, I negotiated the Setanta automated phone system, checked the option for billing by post, and saw most of the two games (missing the first 15 minutes of the first one while I waited for my subscription to register on my Sky Plus setup). Then I sat back and waited for a bill, which I would pay before terminating my subscription.

Hopeless optimism. Naturally, no bill ever materialised. Equally naturally, £9.99 was removed from my credit card’s account each month. The next three months were spent mostly on the phone trying to get anyone – anyone – to answer my calls to what is carefully guarded as the only of contact with Setanta Sports: its automated phone line. Despite leaving my phone to ring for on occasions, two hours, it was never answered. The message was clear: once you subscribe to Setanta Sports it is impossible to unsubscribe. Physically impossible, that is.
I went on the website and found an email address for an alleged PR person. Copious emails, of course, went unanswered. I considered contacting Watchdog: clearly this was the sort of scam normally perpetrated by Nigerians claiming to have relatives in their country’s Government. Every few days, I’d try the hotline, to no avail (it goes without saying that the automated system has no option to cancel your subscription).

During this period, there may well have been Premiership games on Setanta Sports, but the astonishing ineptness of their punters and presenters (Steve McManaman: I ask you!) rendered the joys of Derby trying to scrape a nil-nil draw even less attractive than usual. And what else do you get on Setanta Sports? Well, just think of the least interesting sports in the world, enacted by the most bumbling practitioners, and you get a pretty accurate picture.

Eventually, my credit card went over its limit, so a payment failed to go through. Guess what? I received a call from a deliciously obnoxious woman. At last, I could cancel my ill-starred subscription. Or so I thought. Clearly conversant with the works of Joseph Heller, the joyless harpy came up with a stunning Catch-22, which sealed my rapidly growing conviction that Setanta Sports was indeed some sort of giant scam. I was told that I couldn’t cancel my subscription without paying the extra £9.99. I retorted that I had been trying to cancel my subscription for three months, but had been unable due to what seemed like wilful evasion on Setanta Sports’ part, and as far as I was concerned, I was two lots of £9.99 back. Computer says no.

I demanded to speak to computer says no’s boss. Another shrieking harpy, spouting that dread phrase “Terms and Conditions” at me – grounds enough, in itself, for having nothing to do with a company when that happens. The only way I could cancel that subscription, she reiterated, was for me to pay the £9.99. I ranted, somewhat cathartically (although it did scare the dog) and slammed the phone down.

By now, the injustice of the situation was affecting my mental state – have consumers’ rights been superseded by automated phone systems and Terms and Conditions? In so many ways, the digital age has returned us to the Dark Ages, but I’d never come across any organisation so keen to revel in that fact and, indeed, rub my nose in it. At least, not since the days when BT had its infamous monopoly after being privatised, and promptly posted a £2.8 billion profit.

Eventually calming down, I relented, and this time, it only took three or four twenty-minute efforts before I managed to get a human voice over the hotline. Now things took a turn for the surreal. I couldn’t pay the £9.99 because my credit card was no longer operational (thanks to those Setanta Sports payments that I never wanted to make, but couldn’t stop because Setanta Sports refused to answer my phone-calls). Could I pay via my debit card? Of course not. Why not? We don’t take debit card payments. My subsequent outburst sent the dog beneath the sofa.

Eventually, I had to send a cheque for £9.99 to Setanta Sports – registered post, of course, as they would surely have denied receiving it otherwise. The moment I handed it to the woman at the Post Office counter, I felt happier than I had done for three months. Indeed, I felt positively carefree until I heard that they had ramped up their football coverage this year, even taking in FA Cup matches at the BBC’s expense. This is the worst thing to happen to football since Sepp Blatter’s appointment.

Do yourselves a favour: don’t be taken in by Setanta Sports. Currently, a theory is doing the rounds which suggests they spent all that money on those rights in the hope that someone – generally held to be ESPN – will buy them up. A plan generally acknowledged to have been scuppered by the credit crunch. Further illustration of what muppets Setanta Sports are. Actually, that last statement may well have been libellous had Jim Henson still been alive.

If we refuse to subscribe, then even those money-grabbers at the Premier League and FA might realise what a crock the Setanta Sports deal is. Apparently they need 1.5 million subscribers to break even – I beg you not to let that happen. I know that pubs are no longer enticing places in which to hang out following the smoking ban, which is why so many of them are going bust. But we could make the best of two intolerable situations by making a point of going to the pub to watch football games televised Setanta Sports. Even if the sort of pubs that have Setanta Sports are inevitably populated by toothless, paralytic Irishmen. Isn’t the 21st century great?


By Stevie B