And now for something completely off topic...
I bought a TiVo PVR recently, hooked it up to my various and sundry entertainment equipment, and everything was just grand. Except I started finding myself watching more TV than ever before... But that is not their fault... Their lack of even a shred of real customer service, however, earns them a place in hell. They want customers to pay money every month for their service, but are not willing to provide any real customer service in return.
Why do I feel this way? I decided, after a week or so of running my TiVo, to dispense with the phone cable and to instead use a USB wireless card to perform the daily updates. Hah! Good luck with that one... I bought one of the recommended adapters (listed as compatible on their website) and plugged it in, and was unable to set any network settings (which means that the adapter was not being recognized by the POS tivo.
I'm a technical kind of person, so I went to the tivo.com website and walked through their troubleshooting guide a few times and then called tech support. After waiting on hold for twenty minutes, I was then transfered to tech support, which promptly disconnected my call, and since it was then after their hours, I could not call back. The next day, I called again, only to have to wait yet again (20 more minutes) to be transfered to tech support which then necessitated an additional wait of 35 minutes. After all that BS, I received the rather unhelpful (or clueless, as I think of it) advice to please try rebooting the unit (one of the steps in the troubleshooting guide) yet again and to please call back. Sheesh, it's as if when I said I'd performed the steps in the troubleshooting guide, I was speaking Greek or something. Perhaps I should have tried in another language.
Utterly disgusted, I then hooked the adapter up to my Linux machine (the TiVo runs on a modified linux kernel). As I suspected, it was all good, could surf the web, etc. So then I plugged the adapter back into the tivo, re-walked through the troubleshooting steps, and dialed up tech support, yet again. Yet again, 20 minutes of muzak, and then 20 minutes on hold. The technicial at least tried to figure out the problem this time (to her credit) but ended the call with asking me to please go buy another adapter and try that. If that failed, she promised TiVo would exchange the unit.
So I go get another card, plug it in, and what do you know, same problem. So back to the phone, wait 10 minutes, transfer to tech support, wait 65 minutes, and then a tech support guy gets on the line and tries to help. I say tries, because he obviously cannot read from the notes that have been left on my account at this point. As he goes through the list, and I tell him I've been theire and done that, he gets huffy and says that the TiVo runs linux, and that the adapter working on my PC does not mean that the adapter works. I explained that I run Linux, and he parrots what the last tech said - that I need to go try another adapter. What, do wireless adapters grow on trees or something?
So I explain that I'd already tried two, and that I was told that the unit would be exchanged if the second one did not work. He refused and stated that they would not exchange out the machine for any wireless problems, no matter what. Nice.
So, left with no other alternative, I explain that I'm within my first 30 days, return the POS. He says, OK, please hold for the returns desk. ARGH!
Ten minutes later, at least the lady was very nice at the returns desk (perhaps she heard me screaming since we're in the same state and all). She explained that all the pieces need to be in the box, yadda, yadda, yadda, now go pay to ship it back to us.
So much for TiVo's being easy-to-use. Serves me right for not trying freevo or mythtv first. Heck, ReplayTV is still an option too. Not to mention the cable companies, who, incidentally, are eating TiVo's lunch. Serves the bastards right too.
Posted by earthsong at September 2, 2004 04:00 AM