The subject was "Refund needed."
The complete message was almost as short: the NFL channel kept saying it was offline when I wanted to watch it, and I wanted my money back.
That was the whole support ticket.
I had paid for an online sports service because watching football through a computer sounded useful. The payment went through. The channel did not. In 2007, streaming video still asked for a lot of patience, and this particular service had used all of mine.
The payment notice and complaint are nineteen minutes apart in the mailbox. I bought access, tried the channel, and found it offline almost immediately. There was no long period of troubleshooting recorded between the purchase and the refund request.
There is an obvious connection to the work I was doing at Beatport. People paid us for digital files and expected the files to be there. They did not care which server, database, storage system, or payment process had failed. They cared that the thing they bought worked.
I was exactly the same kind of customer. I did not send the streaming company an architecture review. I did not ask about capacity or vendors. I said the channel was offline and asked for a refund.
The email does not show whether they issued one. It only shows that the purchase had happened and the service was not available when I tried to use it.
That distinction is worth keeping. I can document the bad first experience. I cannot turn it into a story about a company failing, because I do not have the rest of its side or even the final support response.
Fair enough. Refund needed.