u/Sea_Appointment_3042

Every season The Floor introduces new things to try to encourage people to stay and play, although none of them seem to appreciably improve the odds of winning. First it was the $20k to whoever has the most territory at the end of the episode, then it was the Time Boost, then the Category Steal, and now the Territory Freeze. Based on who the winners have turned out to be every season, it appears that the most effective strategy is to have a niche category that nobody wants to challenge and stay on the floor as much as possible. I think that there is a change they could make that could potentially improve the odds of winning for those who stay and play enough that it might actually make sense to not immediately go back to the floor.

I think that instead of the Time Boost, they should give a player who has won 3 duels the option to have a Life. A player with a Life who loses a duel would be able to stay in the game, but would only keep one rectangle. The rest of their territory would go to the winner. Players who don't lose should be able to keep accumulating lives. I think the longest winning streak so far has been 7, so it seems unlikely that a player would accumulate more than two.

Right now not playing tends to be the winning strategy because every time you play, there's a chance you could lose, and if you lose once, you're out of the game. With Lives, there's still a chance you could lose each time you play, but losing once no longer necessarily means you're out of the game. This would provide an advantage in particular to very good duelers who stay and play and keep winning.

I think the biggest problem with Lives is that it would make the game take longer, and they only have a finite number of episodes. My preferred solution for this would be to cut out the reality TV-style confessionals and just have more duels each episode, but if they're married to the confessionals, they'd probably have to introduce something like doubles duels in the back half of the season to eliminate two players at a time.

This is a very minor nitpick, but it bugs me that Rob refers to each space as a "piece of territory" or a "piece of turf". Why can't each space be a "territory"? Or a "rectangle" or "block" or "sector" or whatever? I feel like he could save a lot of breath by saying something like "Gwen has 12 territories" rather than "Gwen has 12 pieces of territory". Again, it's not a big deal; it's just something I think about whenever I watch the show.

So at the end of March my wife and I decided we wanted to sign up for Apple TV+. They had a few shows we wanted to watch. I remembered hearing about the Stream Saver bundle with Netflix, Peacock, and Apple TV+, and we already had Netflix, so I decided to look into the bundle. I think it turned out that the bundle with Netflix with ads was about the same price (or maybe cheaper, I don't remember) than my Netflix plan without ads, so we decided to get the bundle so we could have both Netflix and Apple TV+. Activating Netflix went smoothly. Apple TV+ had no Activate button on my xfinity.com/yoursubscriptions page. I chatted with a live agent, and they advised me to download the Apple TV app and activate it through that app. I downloaded the app, it gave me an option to connect through Xfinity, I put in my Xfinity credentials, and was able to get it activated. So far, no big deal.

A couple of weeks later, I decided to look into upgrading my internet. I had 500 MB internet at the time. I already had the Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max bundle through Disney, and signed in to all of them with my Gmail. I noticed that 1GB internet was the same price as what I was paying for 500 MB and included Disney+ and Hulu, so if I cancelled my Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max bundle and added HBO Max to my Stream Saver bundle, I would get twice the internet speed and save about $20/month! I tried to do the upgrade myself on the Xfinity website, but for some reason it wouldn't let me, and the website told me I had to chat with a live agent or call customer service to place the order. I tried chatting with a live agent, and he told me that I had to call customer service. I called customer service and the customer service rep placed my order. Unfortunately, he placed the order for the wrong Stream Saver bundle, which I did not notice right away because the order confirmation doesn't clearly list all of the services included with the Stream Saver bundle. Apparently Xfinity has a Peacock, Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, and Hulu bundle that is exactly the same price as their Peacock, Netflix, HBO Max, and Apple TV bundle.

Now that I had HBO Max added to my Stream Saver bundle, I had to activate it. Once again, there was no Activate button on my xfinity.com/yoursubscriptions page. I tried to sign into the HBO Max app like I had done previously with Apple TV, but it didn't give me the option to connect through Xfinity, so I decided to do another chat with the live agent. The agent tried resending me the link to the Your Subscriptions page, which of course made no difference. They asked me if my previous subscription to Disney+/Hulu/HBO Max was still active, and I told them it was, and they told me that I would have to cancel that first, then wait a few days and try to activate again. So I cancelled my subscription, waited a few days, and tried to activate HBO Max again, and it still didn't work.

I had another chat with a live agent, who of course sent me the Your Subscriptions link, which did nothing, and ultimately decided to have someone call me. The person on the phone tried resending me the link again, which as usual didn't do anything. Then she suggested I try signing in with my Comcast email address and my Xfinity password. The Comcast email must've been given to me when I first signed up for Xfinity, and I've never used it once. Anyway, I tried that and ultimately it worked.

While I was on the phone with her and looking at my Your Subscriptions page, I noticed that Apple TV wasn't included in my list of subscriptions, and Disney+/Hulu was "Included with Stream Saver", so when she asked if there was anything else she could help me with I told her that the customer service rep who placed my order had ordered the wrong bundle. He ordered the bundle that included Disney+/Hulu, while I asked for the one with Apple TV. She then thought that I didn't want Disney+/Hulu, so I explained to her that I still wanted the Disney+/Hulu package that was included with my internet but I wanted Apple TV on my Stream Saver. It would make no sense for me to pay for Disney+/Hulu with my Stream Saver when I was already getting it for free with my internet! Eventually she understood and cancelled my duplicate Disney+/Hulu subscription and added Apple TV to my Stream Saver bundle.

Now that I was getting Disney+ and Hulu through Xfinity, I had to activate it. Once again, there was no Activate button. The FAQs at the bottom of the Your Subscriptions page suggested that sometimes there is no Activate button when a change has been recently made, so I decided to wait a few more days and try again. Last night my previous subscription to Disney+ ended, so I decided to try to activate it again. Once again, there was still no Activate button.

By this time I had been through this rodeo enough that I thought I knew the solution. I tried signing into the Disney+ app with my Gmail. It took me to a screen telling me to check my inbox. I checked my inbox and clicked the link in the email they sent me. It took me to a page asking me to pick a Disney+ plan. I did not want to do that because I was already supposed to be getting Disney+ for free with my internet plan. I tried signing in with my Comcast email and my Xfinity password, and it took me to the same "Check Your Inbox" screen. The problem, though, was that I had no access to my Comcast email to check my inbox. I tried clicking the Check Your Email link in the Xfinity app, but it just took me to a support page about using your Comcast email.

Since none of the stuff I did before had worked, I decided to once again chat with a live agent. The live agent sent me the Your Subscriptions link, as usual, and there was still no Activate button, as usual. Then the live agent walked me through all of the things I had already just done, and of course none of them worked. The agent told me that I would need to go into my local Xfinity store and get someone there to help me with my activation.

So today I went to the Xfinity and told one of the sales reps about my issue with activating Disney+. He tried sending me the Your Subscriptions link several times, and it never accomplished anything. He had me try all of the things I had already tried both by myself and with the live agent, and, of course, none of them worked. He had me try logging in to Disney+ with my Gmail and my Xfinity password, which of course didn't work because the email/password combination didn't match.

He tried to get me access to my Comcast email, but apparently at some point they migrated the Comcast emails to Yahoo, and deleted the unused email accounts. They probably sent me an email at some point letting me know my Comcast email account was being deleted, and I probably ignored it because I didn't care about an email account I never used being deleted. Anyway, he tried to get access to my Comcast email through Yahoo, but Yahoo didn't have that account, so he said there was no way to recover my Comcast email.

He suggested I call Disney to see if they could get it activated on their end. I didn't want to leave the store without getting this resolved, so I stayed at the store while I called Disney and the sales rep helped other customers. Disney said they showed my Gmail account closed and didn't have records of the Comcast one. When I told them I was at the Xfinity store, they wanted someone from Xfinity to join the call so they could work out what the issue was. At this point, all of the sales reps were busy with other customers, so there was a 15-20 minute wait to speak to someone. I told the Disney rep I would call back later once I was able to get in front of an Xfinity rep.

When I was finally able to see another Xfinity rep, it was a different person, so I had to explain the whole situation all over again. Once again we had to try all of the same old things that never worked for any of the other people I had already tried them with. Eventually he suggested that I chat with a live agent and ask them to create an ECM ticket. I did another live chat while he helped other customers. Once again, I had to re-explain the whole situation, click all of the same links, and go through all of the same steps I had already done with all of the previous people. Eventually he told me that he couldn't create an ECM ticket because it's a managed service and I have to talk to someone from the dedicated team that handles that. I asked him to put me in touch with someone from the dedicated team, and he gave me the phone number for Disney.

Since I had already spoken to Disney and they wanted to speak to someone from Xfinity, I decided to wait for an Xfinity rep to become available before calling Disney. Eventually the last sales rep I had spoken with referred me to a third sales rep. I once again explained the situation to the 3rd sales rep and went through all of the usual steps that didn't help. He then referred me to their Virtual Agent, which is basically a Zoom call with a customer service rep in a call center. The Virtual Agent tried sending me the Your Subscriptions link a few more times, with the obvious result. She ended up deciding that the issue must be some kind of technical issue on their end and had someone from tech support call me.

Once again, I had to re-explain the whole situation to the guy from tech support. As usual, he tried sending me the Your Subscription link, which didn't help. He tried suggesting all of the various things I'd tried already, and each time I told him that I had already tried it and exactly what the outcome would be. Occasionally I would try them yet again just to humor him.

Eventually he determined that there was nothing he could do, and suggested I just sign up and pay for Disney+ and Hulu myself! I told him I would be willing to do that if Xfinity would credit me the amount I would have to pay for Disney+ and Hulu every month, but he told me that was not possible. I tried to explain to him that I don't want to pay for this service when I'm already paying for it through my internet bill. He tried to convince me that I'm technically not paying for Disney+/Hulu, I'm getting it for free with my internet, so I wouldn't be entitled to a credit for it. But I'm supposed to be getting it free! He offered me a one-time credit, but I told him that if I have to pay for Disney+/Hulu out of my own pocket every month, I should get the credit every month! The whole reason I made this switch in the first place was to save money on Disney+/Hulu!

I told him that I was going to tell a sales rep at the store exactly what he told me and if that's the best they could do, I would cancel my entire Xfinity service and get my internet and streaming services elsewhere. He told me that if I wanted to get my services somewhere else, then they wouldn't want to stop me. Then he asked to also speak with the sales rep I was going to talk to. I went and told the 3rd sales rep about the tech support guy's suggestion that I just pay for Disney+/Hulu myself, and had the tech support guy on speaker phone. Sales Rep shook his head and started to laugh at that suggestion, and I told him that was exactly my reaction! He tried to explain to Tech Support Guy that they don't want the customer to pay for something they're supposed to be giving the customer for free.

Sales Rep tried to get Tech Support Guy to come up with a solution. At one point Tech Support Guy griped about having been on the phone for an hour. At that point, I had been at the Xfinity store for 4 hours! Eventually the Sales Rep got him to create a ticket. He gave me the ticket number and told me that if the issue hasn't been resolved within a week, to call customer service and ask for an update on the ticket. He also gave me a one-time credit on my account for being without the Disney+/Hulu service. But I'm very doubtful this ticket is going to go anywhere.

It's wild how everyone at Xfinity has tried to make this issue my problem and not their problem. At every point rather than working until a solution is found, I get passed along to another person. Here's what the Xfinity website advertises about their streaming bundles:

https://preview.redd.it/d2jb6l32u9zg1.png?width=746&format=png&auto=webp&s=b9ce535ea891aca6e76e742c029f8e2e0015edd3

But in order for the transition to be seamless, Xfinity reps need to go out of their way to resolve issues that pop up along the way, not pass the buck.

Anyway, I'd still like to get my Disney+ and Hulu service activated, if that's cool.