Video is a hot word in the Web industry. Everyone from ESPN to MTV to Reuters is scrambling to deliver streaming video for the masses, who are adopting broadband in record numbers. But in the rush to dish out content, have the companies thought about quality, especially quality customer service?

Paid content is also hot stuff. For almost a decade, businesses have wondered just what type of content people would pay for on the historically free Internet. A meeting of these two trends is best exemplified this spring by Major League Baseball.

When a new product starts to move out of the cutting edge and into the mainstream, customer service can make a big difference in its success or failure. Paid content on the Web is at that point. I might sit through choppy, jerky streaming video if it's free. If I'm paying, I want it to work every time.

For $15 per month or $80 for the season, you can watch streaming video of 97 percent of the games played. The MLB marketing puffery sometimes obscures the fact that you won't be allowed to watch teams from your area. They look at the address that goes with your credit card and black out local teams. Still, the model seems to work. Long-suffering Red Sox fans in Omaha can see every Red Sox game on the Web. I'm a big baseball fan, so I subscribed.

The customer comes first
The other day, I decided to stream a Boston vs. New York game. The stream was horrible. It was like watching a slide show instead of motion video. The audio cut out every so often, too. I was paying for this privilege of stop-motion pitching and batting, so I headed to the MLB.com Web site to get some help.

Cutting-edge customer service?
It took a little detective work to figure out where to get help. At the streaming video page, I had to scroll down to the bottom to find a Help/Contact Us link. This placement is unfortunately not unusual. Lesson No. 1 for paid content on the Web: when the customer's paying, you need to make help easy to find.

Things got better at the FAQ. The one I needed was called Technical Troubleshooting. Streaming video questions had their own header, and there was a question called "How do I improve the quality of my video feed?" What followed was a fairly thorough and clear explanation of how to tweak the settings of your video player. It even had a link to a bandwidth meter so that you could determine if your connection was the problem. This part is a model of online help.

However, once I tweaked all my settings and checked my bandwidth, the feed was still choppy. So the instructions told me to do this:

"Lastly, if the above troubleshooting steps do not improve the quality of the feed, heavy Internet traffic may be the problem. In this case, please call Customer Support at [phone number]. Please be prepared to provide the following information."

It then listed no fewer 10 different personal information items I needed, including my name, phone number, ISP, connection type, location, and even IP address. Not good. I should be able to give them just my user ID.

We're sorry, your quality expectations are too high, please try again
I called MLB and, of course, was put on hold. After six minutes, I was told I could press 1 to leave a message. No way. As a paying customer of an on-demand service I want personal help.

Eighteen minutes later, I spoke to a person about the problem. He asked me to hold for a second while he alerted the tech department. When he came back, he did not ask for the information I was told I might have to provide. So running ipconfig was a waste of my time. He told me that the stream was probably really popular and that's why it was choppy.

I asked him if they were going to do anything about it. He said the tech department was working on it. I foolishly said thanks and hung up.

If you're paying, demand quality
What I should have done was ask how much money I would be refunded for poor service. I didn't because I fell into the trap of low expectations. Shoddy operating systems and the wildness of the Internet have led me to tolerate poor performance from the Web. But if you're paying, you deserve better. Streams I pay for should have enough bandwidth to deliver. MLB knows which games are going to be popular and should plan accordingly, rather than letting paid customers suffer.

Any content provider that thinks it doesn't need top-notch customer service will have a rude awakening if its product gains widespread acceptance. The masses won't be so accepting of poor performance.

Got your own ideas on the state of Web customer service? TalkBack and tell us.