Illegal Pants Downfield
Footballguy
Brace yourselves, kids - this is going to be a long one! 
Have carried our league on Fanball for several years now (4 years or so) after having been on Sportsline for many years.
Last year, I noticed Fanball had a lot of ads that I feel were designed/coded purely to trick you into clicking on them. They would be full page-width banner ads, but where almost a majority of the ad itself was whitespace. I may be crazy, but I clicked on those things over and over by accident because I was just trying to click on some whitespace to get my cursor/screen focus onto the page so that I could scroll the page using my mouse wheel.
But, I got over that ... pain in the butt, but not a huge deal. Maybe a 3 out of 10 on the "shady web practices meter".
Now this year, I come across their "new and improved site design".
Part of this design is these layered "popups". It's not really a popup. It's more like you go to a page (for example, your league's homepage), and the whole page fades into the background while a separate window fades up into the foreground. And this new window that you're presented is offering to sell you one of Fanball's products/services/games/whatever. Which is fine - they have to make money somehow. Initially, I kind of took the same approach as with their banner ad trickery from last year. It's a little bit shady, and a little bit annoying, but it is what it is.
My big problem is that there is a "click here to not show this again" box on the little popup window. Which is a fairly standard web practice - similar to when you get on a company's email list, it is good practice for their emails to have on an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of every email, so you can opt out if you want. Similar case here...I'm not interested in whatever upgrade/add-on they're pitching, so I check the box that says it won't show me the window again.
But it does.
Almost every time.
In their defense, it's not every time that the thing pops up...but I've clicked the "don't show me this again" box at least half a dozen times.
And I still get it.
And I not only get that full-page popup on my league's homepage, but I get another little intrusive overlay pitch - another "ad layer" that lives over the little "latest player news" widget on my league's homepage. This one is pitching Fanball's premium "Owner's Edge" product. Pain in the butt, of course, because you have to either click to order or click to make it go away before you get to see your player news. Again here, there's a "don't show me this anymore" box. So I check it, and it goes away. Until the next time I load the page. Then I have to click "don't show this again" so that I can see my player news.
This is a solid 7.5 out of 10 on the 'shady web practices meter'. It feels like they are trying to trick me/annoy me into signing up for one of their premium services.
I sent an email to Fanball customer support to ask why their webforms weren't acknowledging that I clicked on the "don't show me this again" boxes, and I got a canned response about how they need to have banner ads on the site because "The reality is that the cost of bringing you the best Commissioner product on the market at a price that offers great value is more than league fees alone can cover.".
Well...that's just great. Now, not only are their stupid overlay web forms not working and annoying me, but their customer support team is completely missing the point (that their opt outs don't work), and THAT is annoying me as well...
I don't think this is a browser issue or anything - I have my cookies turned on (I would imagine the popup writes a cookie to indicate that you've opted out...)
Bottom line: last year, Fanball was kinda bad. This year, Fanball is very bad. And we haven't even hit the season yet. Fanball's headed down the wrong path: it's clear that customer satisfaction/user experience is not a priority for them. Bad news when there are dozens of competitors out there offering similar products at similar pricing levels...without the affront of this annoying product placement.
Rant.
Over.
[sorry it went so long...hope you enjoyed your popcorn.]
Has anyone else had similar issues with Fanball this year, or am I just crazy? (this is a distinct possibility
)
Have carried our league on Fanball for several years now (4 years or so) after having been on Sportsline for many years.
Last year, I noticed Fanball had a lot of ads that I feel were designed/coded purely to trick you into clicking on them. They would be full page-width banner ads, but where almost a majority of the ad itself was whitespace. I may be crazy, but I clicked on those things over and over by accident because I was just trying to click on some whitespace to get my cursor/screen focus onto the page so that I could scroll the page using my mouse wheel.
But, I got over that ... pain in the butt, but not a huge deal. Maybe a 3 out of 10 on the "shady web practices meter".
Now this year, I come across their "new and improved site design".
Part of this design is these layered "popups". It's not really a popup. It's more like you go to a page (for example, your league's homepage), and the whole page fades into the background while a separate window fades up into the foreground. And this new window that you're presented is offering to sell you one of Fanball's products/services/games/whatever. Which is fine - they have to make money somehow. Initially, I kind of took the same approach as with their banner ad trickery from last year. It's a little bit shady, and a little bit annoying, but it is what it is.
My big problem is that there is a "click here to not show this again" box on the little popup window. Which is a fairly standard web practice - similar to when you get on a company's email list, it is good practice for their emails to have on an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of every email, so you can opt out if you want. Similar case here...I'm not interested in whatever upgrade/add-on they're pitching, so I check the box that says it won't show me the window again.
But it does.
Almost every time.
In their defense, it's not every time that the thing pops up...but I've clicked the "don't show me this again" box at least half a dozen times.
And I still get it.
And I not only get that full-page popup on my league's homepage, but I get another little intrusive overlay pitch - another "ad layer" that lives over the little "latest player news" widget on my league's homepage. This one is pitching Fanball's premium "Owner's Edge" product. Pain in the butt, of course, because you have to either click to order or click to make it go away before you get to see your player news. Again here, there's a "don't show me this anymore" box. So I check it, and it goes away. Until the next time I load the page. Then I have to click "don't show this again" so that I can see my player news.
This is a solid 7.5 out of 10 on the 'shady web practices meter'. It feels like they are trying to trick me/annoy me into signing up for one of their premium services.
I sent an email to Fanball customer support to ask why their webforms weren't acknowledging that I clicked on the "don't show me this again" boxes, and I got a canned response about how they need to have banner ads on the site because "The reality is that the cost of bringing you the best Commissioner product on the market at a price that offers great value is more than league fees alone can cover.".
Well...that's just great. Now, not only are their stupid overlay web forms not working and annoying me, but their customer support team is completely missing the point (that their opt outs don't work), and THAT is annoying me as well...
I don't think this is a browser issue or anything - I have my cookies turned on (I would imagine the popup writes a cookie to indicate that you've opted out...)
Bottom line: last year, Fanball was kinda bad. This year, Fanball is very bad. And we haven't even hit the season yet. Fanball's headed down the wrong path: it's clear that customer satisfaction/user experience is not a priority for them. Bad news when there are dozens of competitors out there offering similar products at similar pricing levels...without the affront of this annoying product placement.
Rant.
Over.
[sorry it went so long...hope you enjoyed your popcorn.]
Has anyone else had similar issues with Fanball this year, or am I just crazy? (this is a distinct possibility
)
My 17-paragraph rant, boiled down into 3 sentences. Nicely done. 
