The Day Our TiVo Blew Up.
Ugh.
I’m very, very upset. (So is Erin.)
Our TiVo went <anatomy part> up this morning. “Yes,” TiVo agrees, “most units don’t die after just a year and a half. No,” they continued, “we won’t lift a finger to help you out, beyond the $80 [plus shipping, as I found out later.] racket we’re running on refurbished units.”
I gave the nice Level 2 (Bill) a list of things he could do to make me happy, such as (1) sell me a new hard drive at cost ($30) (Answer: “No.”) or (2) make the $80 worth my while by bumping it from 40 GB to 80 GB (Answer: “No, we can’t do that.” “Can’t or won’t? Just put a better unit in the box you ship.” “Well, sure, someone at the warehouse could do that, but we have no way to request it. So, No.”).
I’m not unreasonable. I’m not demanding a fixed unit for free or anything, although that was certainly what I expected before I picked up the phone.
TiVo bills itself as an appliance, but it sure doesn’t act like one, and customer support is utterly inflexible. (Oh, wait, they offered to pick up the $10 shipping that they didn’t even tell me about originally. Nice.)