Peacock TV
reviews and complaints

Final update: I just read that Xfinity has opted to discontinue including this service in their service packages. This is too bad as they continue to remove channels and demand more money. I already cut the cable bill out and while it was nice being able to watch something’s I will not give nbc universal or more specifically the Comcast corporation another dime. At least not until the service reflects the ever increasing exorbitant amount of money they charge. Discontinuing the inclusion of peacock in their service without lowering their cost just makes the distance between the divide further away.

Another update: ad so many ads you used to get the option to watch a 3 minute ad and then a 30 min show wouldn’t be interrupted but not any more. SNL clips are severely limited & then to ad insult to ads the app functionality isn’t very well designed. I start a show before it begins I get an ad then let’s say i picked the wrong episode I wanted the next one and even if I realize right away and end the episode so I can switch to the next episode the app I guess can’t tell 10 sec from 10 minutes cause I’ll get an ad when I leave the episode and another before the originally intended episode begins. Lastly if you’re collecting data for Advertising purposes and the ones they show me ie money you make off me plus the money I pay my cable bill or the money you get from me I’m curious how much money each customer is bringing COMCAST NBC UNIVERSAL it either isn’t much or you know how little value your product is worth or you’re rolling in it and letting us eat the crumbs off your plate and then charging us for it as well as collecting money from the broadcasting of the scam Update: Months later and I watch it occasionally if days of our lives is interrupted due to Newsom giving a COVID update or recently the election coverage. Ive tried several of the original series the only one I liked is only considered theirs because they moved it from nbc for a 3rd season (AP Bio) aside from that everything else is just okay. My biggest issue is still the amount of ads. The only real change to my original review is this trash isn’t free. Not for xfinity customers who pay for premium service. We pay for this service since they refuse to add an HBOMax app on the x1 box meaning that xfinity is removing channels like Starz and Cinimax from packages which were a part of the package I chose and paid for and giving access to a commercial riddled service they don’t have to pay to use like Peacock the one they own and instead get to keep ad revenue as well include HBOMax which you can’t watch on their cable box because they pretend that it’s hard to make the apps yet oddly enough Roku manage to get a peacock app pretty quick when NBCUniversal threatened to remove all of their programming. So bottomline is this app isn’t free and merely highlights NBCUniversal & Xfinity’s greed and corruption and their lack of aversion to screw the consumer over for their bottomline. However it continues to be a smart business venture so long as the consumer doesn’t see what’s actually happening. Still with COVID forcing people stay home and the lack of new shows the streaming service who has the best older content will win the streaming war. Sadly for Peacock it’s not them. ————————old review ———————— It was kinda smart to give the streaming service away to Xfinity customers for free since it will been seen by a lot more people right out the gate which helps it look like it’s a success. First 6 days the app was downloaded 1.5 million times which sounds impressive when you ignore that of course people will download something that they’re getting for free. However it would’ve been even smarter had they actually had something that people would be willing to pay for. There is zero chance I’d ever pay for this service. Ads? Um you do get the appeal to streaming services aside from the watching whatever you want (at least whatever is available) whenever you want is the lack of commercials right? I watch an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun & at the start I’m told only one ad during the show. Ok not ideal but still do-able 1 min isn’t too bad. Then episode 2 starts and there’s 3 commercial breaks and they aren’t just a single ad per break either but several different ones. So you compete with Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime & HBOMax with limited original content none of which alone or even all together is anything that would make anyone subscribe to the service and the content you do have is okay but none is worth all the ads by giving it away. Can you beat them when customers are paying for the subscription? The only difference between using Peacock and Xfinity Ondemand is that you don’t get quiet as many commercials. Oh and it’s a bit easier to rewind and fast forward, expect for commercial which while in they disable fast forward and rewind feature. Yeah fail NBC/Universal/Xfinity. Oh right I almost forgot Comcast or Xfinity if you prefer is a part of nbc universal which probably is why they’re able to give it away to Xfinity customers for free. If you think about it Peacock makes perfect sense considering how much money Comcast actually saves by not having to pay Starz and Cinemax to use their channels as part of the premium package. Which goes unchallenged when they “give” peacock to customers for free. Then add to those savings the ads that stream while watching peacock. As well as the fact that most of if not the entire catalogue of shows being offered are actually already owned by the studio/network so they’re given a really good “deal” to peacock for exclusive streaming rights may mean that NBC/Universal/Xfinity even with a subpar streaming service they may in fact still make a profit. So while Peacock is total garbage it may still be a very smart business move.

UPDATE Oct 26th, 2022- Takes FOREVER to start downloading shows (Premium subscription), and now when they do finally download, like 10 minutes later, you can’t play them and get error codes every time, even after deleting and re-installing app! The WORST app of all the ones I have for shows/movies. Stunningly bad.

Visually appealing app, but it never remembers where I am in a show. The AppleTv app always just starts playing show I was watching last night without me doing anything, (but always from the beginning!) just after turning on tv and firing up my Apple TV. No other app I have does that, and it’s super annoying. There is something really wrong that the apps on different devices don’t communicate with each other (same account, same login/user, of course online, not off.) Netflix Prime Hulu and HBO Max all work as they should and remember what shows I’ve watched and where I stop watching. This is the only app/platform I always have this issue with. Super annoying to have to always scroll through eps to find where you left off as Peacock always forgets and just goes back to beginning. Another stupid feature/bug: when it does resume where it should you are always presented with options to “resume” or “start over from beginning”, even though it’s already resumed. There should just be option st that point to “start from beginning”. App feels very beta still

If I could avoid using peacock, I would, but there are too many good shows. However, it is still a painfully bad experience. On iOS/iPadOS there is no Picture in Picture support, which is very annoying, and sometimes the audio breaks and I have to exit the thing I’m watching and reopen it. That is annoying, but not too bad. tvOS is the real problem. It works terribly with the new Siri remote. Normally you can go back or forward ten seconds, but with the new Siri remote there is no way to do that. Clicking the forward and back buttons will bring up an orange symbol to go back or forward 10 seconds, but it won’t do anything, and it won’t go away until you tap somewhere else on the remote. If I had this problem in any other app, it would be slightly annoying, but I would just use the normal method of swiping (or rotating with the new circle gesture on the new Siri remote) to get where I need to go. Not only does peacock not support the new circle gesture, the swiping is terrible. This is probably the biggest problem with peacock. Tiny finger movements that would get me forward or back 4 seconds or so in the Apple TV app do nothing. But as soon as I start swiping my finger enough for peacock to react, it moves too fast for me to get even close to what I want. I can end up full minutes away from my target. This has been a problem with the old and new Siri remote, and it needs to be fixed.

Ya I like nbc a lot so did the full subscription immediately. Well there taken my money monthly, but in fact keep sending me stuff to upgrade confusing me.
So I tried castling n got some guys voice mail that is full, no operator available and they hang up on me. The phone number on my bank statements is no good.
Got second one and found out it was international when Verizon jumped into be sureI wanted to make an international call.
Finally found away online to cancel but it was a big hassle as the link was not there like they said it would be.
A total waste of time and I am done n gone with this:revive. This is not up to the quality of the normal nbc. They should hire some else to manage it.
The first section of shows iss now titled
Can’t not watch! Let’s see, that’s the same as saying can not not watch. Wow what poor grammar! They are a bunch of idiots!
I am done wasting my time with Peacock!
UPDATE: 2/2
Ya , I tried replying to the email address that you sent me and once again, no luck! When I hit send it says Peacock has no email address. Once again you screw me ip n waste my time. If it not canceled cancel it immediately! I sent it anyway and once again you let me down. I deserve a full refund of all monies paid and it would be really fun to get a phone call from Peacock to prove you have a number. [protected] and leave a message if no answer. I rate you a 0 on a scale of 1 to 10! Kenneth Odean

At first glance, this looks like a semi good app to watch your favorite shows on, but don’t be fooled, because soon to find out, it’s probably one of the worst.

Now first off, don’t get me wrong, I know that this company has to make money, so they play ads in your shows. Now at first this doesn’t sound to bad, right? Well you’re wrong, they play 60 second ads, which you can not skip. They play between 1 and 2 of these ads in each episode, and they aren’t even interesting. The ads are about their other crappy shows that no one wants to watch. But like I said, I understand that they have to make money, that isn’t the issue, the issue is that they pose as a completely free app to watch your shows.

They have a monthly subscription that you can buy, and at first, I thought it was just to get rid of the ads in the shows that you watch. But, I was completely wrong, you have to buy a subscription to even be able to watch your whole show.

I was watching one of my shows, and it just kicked me right off. I was confused, so I pressed the button to start the next episode. It said that I had to pay to continue watching the series. This is by far the dumbest thing that I’ve ever seen on a “free” app.

This interaction had turned me away from the app completely, and I will be going back to Netflix. I would rather never see my show again (now that it has moved onto this platform) than give these people a cent more money that they make off of the ads.

When I downloaded this I was optimistic and happy. After all, how could a multi-million dollar media company mess up a media app? I sign up for premium and get ready to download the app on my TV only to find out my brand new Samsung TV isn’t supported! I say that’s ok because I can always airplay it to the tv. So that’s what I do, only to find out I can’t actually airplay it from the app. Now I’m a little worried...
My only other option is to screen share it directly from my phone, well, Peacock has blocked features like this for some reason. So now I can’t watch any of the tv programs or movies on my actual TV. I have to watch them on my phone or my computer. This is ridiculous, it’s 2021 and I can only watch this stuff on my phone? NBC needs to put their big boy pants on if they ever want to compete with the big names like Netflix or Hulu. At the current moment, or anytime in the near future, I won’t even consider redownloading this app. Changes need to be made to the app in order to make it more user friendly. Because of this, the premium subscription just isn’t worth the money. I refuse to go out and buy an accessory for my five hundred dollar tv that runs every other single media app perfectly fine, just so I can’t watch the stuff on this app. Like seriously, this app has been out for months and you can’t watch it on the majority of TVs without having AppleTV, Roku, or Chromecast. NBC, you have lost a customer until you can fix these problems.

I’ve tried to be patient with this app as I knew it hadn’t been around long when I signed up for it several months ago. But at this point I feel like I’m being scammed or cheated. The frequent crashing is one thing but I often have to deal with a lag between the audio and video when I do get it to work and closing then reopening the app only resolves this half of the time. I get thirty minutes into a movie then come back to watch it several hours later and it starts it from the beginning. Normally this would only be a minor inconvenience but as inefficient as the fast forwarding/rewinding is with this app, it seems to often be too much for the app to handle and will result in having to wait several minutes for the movie start where I originally left off only for the audio/video to be off (as I mentioned before)
In short, it operates as if the app was put together by high school students for a school project and I feel like a clown for having spent at least close to $100 on my subscriptions thus far just so that I’d have the option to watch The Office.

I would also like to add that I do not have this issue from any other streaming service or anything in my house that uses WiFi. This seems to be exclusively a Peacock problem.

Currently thirty minutes into trying to watch a movie and fast forwarding it even fifty seconds completely stops the program. Being a paying subscriber, I really feel cheated by this. Again, this is exclusively a Peacock issue.

I wish it would work better! I got the 4.99 option to try it. Brings ads. I troughs bfd. Omg this is so annoying! It isn’t the ads that’s annoying is the glitches.. if they even are glitches and not an annoying way to make people buy the 9.99 option. Let me explain: I’m watching an episode of something, it plays an ad, then it plays a minute of the show followed by more ads. I’m like ok… but then it’ll randomly stop the show and go to the next show but not before showing you more ads. Then when you go back to the previous episode guess what? More ads! So you click on the previous episode and after watching the ads guess what? It takes you to the Home Screen! And sometimes it’s in the right place it left off but either way you’re getting more ads.. sometimes it randomly goes home.. and when it says “congrats you earned this episode ad-free” guess what happens? It stops playing and goes home and when you click on the show to continue watching, MORE ADS… and if it isn’t where you left off and you’re searching, MORE ADS. I counted one episode me doing this 3 times and I saw roughly 22 ads…. Like seriously…….. is this a glitch? Cause if I pay 9.99 and all this mysteriously fixes itself then it’s super suspicious. I can’t believe a network like bravo cannot get a better working app… there are more glitches it does and excuses to show ads and I’ve missed so much of episodes because I don’t wanna go back and go through this. It’s been annoying and filled with anxiety I’m so good with this. Cancelling membership and just getting YouTube.

Ok, I’m going to try and stay clam while I write this, which will be a mission in itself, and will most likely fall on deaf ears but I just needed to voice my complaint. NBC has in the span of a couple months ruined my experience of watching premier league in America. I already wake up at 4am on the weekends and to have such a big hurdle just to watch the sport I love is heartbreaking. Firstly, if you’re going to have a paid streaming service to watch the games so be it, but to not have all of them is criminal. Let alone making you switch from game to game rather than just staying on the same stream. We lose out on interviews, goal zone, post game analysis because you’ve made it less convenient. Secondly, the stream has dropped out on a number of occasions. For example, a game froze this weekend forcing me to exit and relaunch the stream, then forcing me to watch yet another ad, during this time two goals were scored. Embarrassing. At least when it was on tv you weren’t missing anything during commercials. Third, how many streaming services will I end up paying for? The sky’s the limit apparently. Between peacock, cable to sign in to nbc for all the OTHER games, cbs for champions league, espn+ for fa cup, etc... I’m left with a salty taste in my mouth and a lighter wallet. If you’re going to go down the streaming road, go all in don’t shaft us, have all the games on there. One channel. Like you had it. Just another thing on the list that’s been ruined in the year 2020. I am utterly sad, frustrated, disappointed, and confused. But again, you’re not going to do anything about it because you can.

Not only is the app honestly incredibly slow, not just on my iPhone, but also on my Amazon FireStick; I thought it had crashed the first several times I tried to use it. It gave me an error message the first few times I tried to upgrade to the ad-free version (which I’ll talk about later), where I eventually just gave up and had to start over. Then the video quality of movies looks worse than a 144p YouTube video. The app thinks I’m trying to pirate movies when I’m just trying to cast them to my TV. Now about the not really ad-free version, I have yet to see any program, movie, or tv show that doesn’t have some ad attached to it. I’m paying about ten dollars a month to watch three to four sixty-second ads per movie where I can't rewind without re-watching all of those ads. At least when the fast forward and rewind features don’t freak out and try and take me to the end or beginning of the movie when I only wanted to go back or forward thirty seconds. And I could put up with all these other grievances if Peacock had Picture in Picture play like all other mainstream streaming services (Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Disney+, ESPN, YouTube, and even the Animal Planet app). Still, it doesn’t, and I’ve seen no news on whether or not they plan to roll out PiP soon. I don’t understand how you could have all these problems and try to compete in the streaming wars. My final thought is they don’t seem to listen to any of their customer feedback as I’ve been scrolling through other reviews from a while ago, and Peacock still has the same problems it had then, they’ve just gone about spending their money on, honestly, pretty crappy original series.

I downloaded the app because I got a new phone you know new phone new apps the basics okay. I download peacock and it’s going normal. Take a few laughs at the last part of peacock blah blah okay cutting to the part when I click on the app when done downloading and it was really quick so I click sign in on the upper corner and when I do, it says we couldn’t find a match Im like maybe I forgot the password I reset it Im in my account online but not in app I change my avatar a bit click on a movie it say download the app Im like pshh- I have the app lol click open app Click sign up again this time I know I have the correct password yet there was still a problem. Im like maybe it’s me maybe I’m the problem here okay but I get it something’s wrong on my side I’ll make a new acc but I knew you can’t use the same email so I make a whole new email whole new account REDECORATE and it says we need the app I go in the app cause once again already got it okay what’s the problem there is none Im good nothing wrong. wE cOuLdNt FiNd A mAtCh FoR tHiS EmAiL bLah BlAh BlAh problems password. Im confused at this point because I did all that, and there’s still a problem. It’s 2 am and I just wanna be a minion rn so please idk how to fix this H E L P . I wanna be a minion please fix this so I can be minioning while watching fellow minions in a box and laugh and cry and whatever I’ve never watched it and I did all this makeup for it not to work. Do I need to go premium? Edit: I need to be in the app to become premium. I need to be in the app and SIGNED IN to become premium so scratch that just H E L P . Edit: other than that it’s a really good app I recommend when this this glitch is over!

The app is crap to put it bluntly not only on my phone but my tv app which is the worst. The mobile app is slow, glitchy, and buggy. But the tv app is where I have the most issues let’s just say I hope an epileptic doesn’t use it because the glitches include flashing my screen on and off really fast might cause a seizure if I were an epileptic, thankfully I’m not to just hurts my head and that flashing in and off glitch happens either if I skip too many times for I guess the app to handle or it goes on commercials. Not only that but the flashing glitch causes my tv to slow and I can’t exit the app leading me to have to reboot my tv or turn it on and off again. Which has caused me to not consume my show as much as I usually would I’d be done with a season by now if it wasn’t for the bugs. Not only that but the skipping is horrendous I have to go back and forth with skipping til it gets to the spot I want it at, just add the 10,15 sec skip button because it’s quiet annoying. I honestly should go watch this show somewhere else but the best quality in terms of pixels is on this app. So either actually but some care into your app and fix it or lose more customers because as I can see with the reviews, it’s not just me. Let’s just say people aren’t as patient as I am they’d go somewhere else and honestly I might just too. Dont even get me started on the “They/Them” movie which is just another set back for the lgbt community really? A boring slasher film with queer kids at a conversion therapy camp that movie is almost as horrendous as the app. Thankfully you can make up for it with classics like “Park & Rec” and “The Office” but I honestly wouldn’t deal with such a horrible app just to watch those tv shows.

Firstly, the app doesn’t work very well. Secondly, it doesn’t play on Samsung SmartTV, one of the most widespread TVs in the US. There is no option to link iPhone, iPod or tablet to the Samsung tv, perhaps to Apple TV, but I don’t like being told by NBC what tv I have to buy just to watch their app, thank you very much. You charge $5 so that I can watch the Premier League, so provide your customers with what they need.
Furthermore, neither on iPhone/pod/pad not even the screen mirroring function works with this app, although the sound plays on the Samsung tv but the screen is black—conversely, then no sound on the mobile device but the picture.

How about releasing an app version for installation directly into Samsung tv? Like Netflix, Amazon, HBO are doing it?

Lastly, the design and user-friendliness and navigation are really not good. It seems that the aim was to be smarter and different than all the other streaming services, and by all means avoid doing it like Netflix or Amazon does...and it has failed completely. It’s just a mess. In some functions the program just begins playing without any option to pause or rewind, and if you want to scroll through the thumbnails you have this cacophony of sounds because one after the other begins playing automatically as soon as you land on the thumbnail.

Also, there isn’t any programming schedule to be found anywhere, not even on the website. Is it that difficult to put a tv schedule online?

NBC Sports Gold was a far better app, worked perfectly on all devices and with all devices, had a far more user friendly design/layout. Why NBC came up with this peacock farce is beyond me. There are people out there that know how to do it right, so please employ those and fix this mess...

The app for Appletv is a mess. If you play content and exit, you cannot get back to the video. A restart of the appletv is required.

NBC is also a mess. They need to designate a person or committee to decide what app or apps they will make available and the planned content of each. Examples of the confusion with a focus on premier league soccer as an example:

1. Games on peacock, games on nbc sports? Choose one to host sports. At one point there was nbc sports gold app that went away as well

2. Games on nbc sports app appear in appletv app that should be a central location to find sporting events. Games on peacock are not there. Why?

3. No where to go to find the schedule of matches for the day. Nbc app shows on schedule for that app. Peacock shows only games on that app but no “schedule”. And as stated appletv app only shows what is on the one app not the other.

The rest of the content appears to be just as confusing. Some shows on one app and some on the other.

NBC make some decisions. Are sports going to be on the same app as other content? Then choose one app for sports. Communicate with appletv app better. Have an organized schedule like you still have on nbc sports but include all matches/events. Maybe one app for sports and one for everything else. There is no need for 3 apps. 1 or 2 is enough. If you insist on having sports on two apps then have a full schedule on both and link to the other app(s) for some matches. This poorly organized roll out of content goes way back pre-peacock. I cannot understand how these decisions haven’t been resolved. I can only assume there are multiple decision makers at nbc with different visions and no arbitrator.

I am cancelling my subscription because of the poor organization of content and constant need to restart the appletv.

This is a serious issue that I’ve experienced 2-3 times now on occasions using 2 different accounts, reinstalling the app and rebooting my phone all to no avail. The 1st time I paid on my old account (after not renewing it last year cause I saw the movie I wanted-the newest reboot of Halloween 2). Being a trilogy I tried to renew my account a few weeks ago, paying by hitting the renew option on my APPLE account only to go the app and have it ask for me to upgrade. Confused because I thought the $9.99 Peacock Premium w/o commercials (what I just ordered) was the upgrade over the FREE and $4.99 w/ commercials accounts. I removed the app restarted my phone and tried to access my account again, still nothing except the app asking for me pay upgrade my account (again). Knowing I was charged because I paid using APPLE ie I got email confirmations from Apple, PayPal, and my card co. that I was charged; I thought maybe just the app was malfunctioning. So then I tried to access my account via my desktop-nothing then my Roku-still nothing. Eventually I tried to get a refund from Peacock. Which in itself is quite the task. Got the refund and actually thought if I pay thru the app it’d work. Nope! Part 2 of this saga I recently tried my bros account via Roku- this time it works, takes the payment and allows access. Only issue is when I log onto the SAME account via the app that I just accessed thru my Roku, it pulls the same bull. Not allowing me to use the premium account I just paid for but instead offers me the option to upgrade from my “free” version of the app. So in conclusion just to be clear the app works great if you want to pay twice for something that won’t work right once. It doesn’t seem to be limited to the app, but maybe you’re entire system that keeps track of accounts and payments. Seriously needs to be fixed ASAP!