Poncelet IM’d me this link late last night. The guy is angry because his Tivo stopped working and they offered to replace it for only $150. I’ve said this before, Tivo has a huge issue with customer service. The way they treat their customers is mutually exclusive with the way their customers expect to be treated.

Our new non-Tivo DVR was scheduled to be installed today. Turns out that it has two tuners. One problem though. We only have one coax cable coming up through that wall. The installer offered to drill a hole in an outside wall and stretch a cable from that wall to the T.V. I politely declined his offer and rescheduled to have him come back on Monday. Then we started work on stretching 35 feet of coax from our utility closet in the basement. Six holes in the ceiling later, and we now have two coax connectors on that wall.

Somehow I burned one of my arms. I wonder how that happened.

This morning, after downloading a bunch of service updates, I returned my Tivo to the store and cancelled by subscription. I was never able to get it to work with my satellite box, which the customer service reps continued to claim support for right up until I discontinued my service. I think that Tivo might have a good product, and I wish that I had gotten to actually try using it, but they have a lot of room for improvement.

First of all, after unpacking a Tivo and activating your account, the Tivo should download all of the updates until it’s current. Especially if any of the updates are going to require restarting the Tivo. I’ve probably restarted it 3 or 4 times over the past week. It takes a while to restart, and during the process you can’t watch T.V.

Second, restarting shouldn’t take so long. After restarting you shouldn’t be subjected to a little animated presentation of a 3D Tivo icon enjoying itself at a theme park or dancing or any other nonsense. It’s annoying.

Next, they really need to put specific interfacing guides up on their website. Include Tivo version numbers and stuff. That way we have an established baseline and we don’t have to keep calling technical support only to be told that we have to do another update, or two, or more. I’m convinced they have this information available for their technical support reps, but I wasn’t able to find it on their website.

Finally, if someone is calling in to discontinue service you should put them in a high priority cue. After waiting on hold for five minutes I started to disassemble and repackage my Tivo. I finally got through to a human just as I was putting the USB wifi adapter back in it’s box. She offered to help me one more time to get it to work. I would have been grateful for her assistance, and willing to try one more time, if everything wasn’t put away. Instead I insisted on a refund.