TiVo: No Lifetime Service For You!

my only problem with tivo service has been the wait times to speak to someone...many times its over 20 minutes.

Interesting that you pick the last day that lifetime is available to write this.

You really going to take Tivo to task because you got some (six month) old stock from a retailer? The newer boxes, available since October or November don't have the lifetime language on the box. Tivo announced the withdrawal of lifetime service in early March and ended it today.

You should complain to Best Buy - they sold you an old box at a new price. If your box said "lifetime service available", it also had back-level Tivo software preloaded on it, rather than the newer code that allows networking right out of the box.

I wonder if Tivo would get any flack from the retailers if every person who purchased a unit advertising the Lifetime Subscription returned the unit to the retailer. In my opinion (humble as it might be) $12.95 a month for an electronic Tv Guide is usery. If Tivo hadn't won their patent case against Direct Tv they would have been out of business with in the year.

Good Luck with Tivo Customer Service, or lack of customer service, which is more true to character. I got rid of my Tivo because of the garbage that they put you through. Apparently nobody at that company has the authority to help you. I love my new replay TV's!!!

Big mistake, buying the Tivo box. I have ReplayTV and my unit just went. I bought a new hard drive (preloaded with the Replay software) and I'm back in business! --I just hope Replay, which is no longer making any boxes, keeps up the same electronic TV guide now that they are changing over to a computer-based format.

Chances are they are making so much money that they are going to do what they want to do without regard to what you, or anyone else, says, wants or does.
You think they care about your business? Wrong! They want it, sure, but no 10 or even 100 of you are going to make or break them, so don't expect them to go too far trying to appease you.
Corporate America was long ago successful in fragmenting the consumer public to the point at which that they don't have to worry anymore about a boycott that's widespread enough to matter to them. They muddle through a little bad press for a short time, then it's business as usual...or should I say, unusual?

As long as we consumers sleep, the only thing we will do about poor service or products is...vent about them in online forums, which I'm sure the companies never read. LOL

Harry, I'm not sure about the states your in, but under Texas law if you'd bought it at, say, Best Buy, and there was no expiration date whatsoever on the lifetime offer, then Tivo is bound by law to honor it. Otherwise, they're not only open to a lawsuit from you, they're also open to prosecution by whatever state AG's office is applicable for false advertising, and quite probably some bait-and-switch clause.

The one mistake you made was letting the call end with "well, we'll open a case...". At that point, you bypass the 1st level phone monkey, and go to a supervisor. You make sure you get a name of the phone monkey for future reference, and before the phone monkey transfers the call you get the name of the supervisor first. If they "lose" you while on hold - nine times out of ten they will do this - you call back and demand that supervisor, and make sure the phone monkey is cited as having hung up on you. The more irate and abused you come across, the quicker they'll resolve your problem to shut you up to *your* satisfaction, not theirs.

Note that if they refuse to connect you to a supervisor, demand to speak to that supervisor's boss, and make sure you get their name as well. If you still get the run-around, then you bypass their customer service, dig up the corporate office number, and call back to demand to speak with someone in charge there. Eventually you'll get someone who'll pay attention because most CS departments are run chaotically without corporate knowing who's fracking who over, and only act when they hear about it.

Either way, stick to your guns on this one, because no matter how long they announced the change in advance, unless they pulled the boxes from the shelves they are bound by law in most states to uphold the offer on the box and the warranty unless they've gone out of business.

And please, when you sue the bastards, keep us appraised of how things go!

First off, OM's absolutely correct. You have it on the box, you called on the 15th, you've got a case number, you're all set. Tivo will honor this. Call them wednesday if you have not heard from them before then.

Anne Non, the patent case was against echostar, not directv. They actually just signed another agreement with directv last wednesday. They can get as much as triple damages from echostar due to the jury finding "willful infringment". That and tivo's injunction against the future sales of echostar's dvrs will be decided monday.

-----= eBay... HERE I COME!!! =-----

As of now, (I think) eBay is the only place you can buy a Tivo with a LifeTime Subscription.

Tivo is to epensve to begin with you pay for the box and then a subscripton fee i personally have a dvr through my cable provider and it records 100 hours and is configured to work directly with my digital cable service and it is only 9.95 a month plus 4.95 for the box which i would have to pay for even for regular digital cable i have the same features as tivo pip and i can pause live tv best part is if it breaks down the cable company just gives me another one also you can get a hdtv box no extra charge hey if your interested my provider is cablevision in N.Y. Long Island you due the math !

Being a customer service rep for a certain pay tv provider, it is not uncommon for products to ship with slightly dated documentation, in order for electronics, or products of any service to be provided without any sort of delay it requires producing large amounts and warehousing those supplies, distributing as needed. Appliances aren't meant to be custom, they're not computers, if you'd like to wait two weeks for your tivo, dvd player, plasma tv, etc etc, it would be no problem to ship the product with current firmware and packaging with accurate promotional information, but if you like your big box pricing/purchase power, than deal with errors. I don't think it makes sense for people to cancel when one channel on their chnl line up card is erroneous, nor do I think it makes sense for someone to complain about a company because the box is a little out of date!

You know what, even if I had to pay monthly....I would. It may be bad business practice to advertise something then not offer it, but I can't imagine how I watched TV without TIVO. It's well worth it. I've had for years now, and mine is so trained I usually don't even have to tell it tape things for me, it just does it automatically, knowing exactly the kind of stuff I watch (for instance, I watch alot of science fiction. The sci-fi channel started playing Dr. Who, and I forgot all about it. Sure enough, TIVO had taped the first 3 episodes for me!)

I have WinDVR on a cheap laptop, works like a charm, no need for Tivo. I can watch most 30 minute programs in about 5 minutes, fast forwarding past the boring parts.

Media Center doesn't have any of the "subscription" BS, plus it has the 30 second skip that we all love. I suggest to purchase a Media Center next time.

tivo should have taken it upon themselves to pull the boxes. i work at an electronics retailer and when a company changes things, they come in, pull the boxes and do whatever is nessesary to update the information, whether it be putting stickers on the boxes or opening every box and putting in new software.

i want tivo- i wish that i would have known about that offer sooner. now we will end up paying the monthly fee. however- it is probably easier this way.. more along the same lines as digital cable.

Hi Harry,

Sorry you had trouble on Saturday. I work for TiVo in Operations. (TiVoOpsMgr on the TiVoCommunity forum.) Our agents were trained on the 8pm Saturday deadline for acquiring Product Lifetime, and almost all of our customers had no trouble getting what they wanted on Saturday. I'm sorry you ran into an issue. Please contact me directly if you have any trouble.

Best regards,
Stephen Mack
Director of Service Operations
TiVo Inc.

In case anybody's still reading this thread: Thank you, Stephen, for the response. My TiVo now says I have a lifetime subscription, and I'm having fun with TiVo to Go. All's well.

I bought a TIVO DVR not knowing TIVO was a service. Can I use my box as a DVR and buy the service later if I choose to do so?

So now that the dealine has passed, and there are still a handful of new lifetime subscriptions to be had, will TiVo honor them?