BBC - trying to lose public support?

There are many great things about publicly-funded services, but one of the less good things is the tendency for the providers to take a "be grateful for what we give you" approach.

Nowhere is this more evident than the BBC's iPlayer. A brilliant service, when it works, but if there is a problem? Hopeless.

The current BBC TV series "Dancing on the Edge" is available on iPlayer. If you have a PC, episodes 1-4 are offered. If you view on a wii, you'll find only episodes 2-4. And it's been like that since the first episode was broadcast.

Why the missing episode on wii? I don't know, and a fortnight after trying to alert the BBC to the problem, I am none the wiser. They did give me a reply - or at least what I am sure gets the box ticked on their performance index sheet. The problem is that it didn't actually address the specific problem that I had carefully explained. It was a generic response saying that not all programs are offered on iPlayer. Gee, thanks for that. I wrote again, to ask for a proper response this time, and have had an acknowledgement to say I should get a response within a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, anyone coming late to the series and armed only with a wii, will find they can't start from the beginning.

There is no explanation - the program is just missing. It's a bit like going down to a railway station for the 16.15 train only to find that there is no mention of it on the departure boards - where what you want is to see "16.15 cancelled" or "16.15 running 45 mins late". Simply omitting information about services where you have a problem is lazy, leaving customers to wonder whether they have mis-typed the name (if they are using the search) or mis-remembered the date or channel (if they are using the schedule function).

Problems do happen. Perhaps the BBC hit some technical problem with that particular episode on that particular platform. Fair enough - but the least they owe their viewers is a note, in the right place, which says "Sorry - if you're looking for this programme, you've not got mad - it's us that has a problem".