About a month ago, one of my TiVo boxes (I have three) gave up on life. Whenever I powered it up, it would get stuck on a powering up screen. There were no strange noises coming from it, so I assume the hard drive was fine. Since I actually got the startup screen, I know the video output was fine. So yesterday I finally called tech support.
After being on hold for a whopping two minutes (w00t), I was talking with a real, live, English-speaking technician. There weren’t many hoops through which I had to jump, since the problem was easy to replicate. I spent about ten minutes trying to cycle the device two times because TiVos can take awhile to boot up. After two failed attempts the technician informed me that I could swap the TiVo for another one. Here’s where the bomb got dropped.
I’ve had the TiVo for several years, so it was no longer under warranty. In order to replace the defective unit, I would have to pay a $150 transfer fee. Seeing as how I only paid $50 for the TiVo (with mail-in rebate), paying $150 to get another one was pretty much a no-brainer. Since I’ve got my eyes set on a HD TiVo (whenever they get released), I politely asked to terminate service for that box. Of course, this is beyond the power of technical support so I had to be transferred to customer service.
After a mind boggling one minute wait, I was chatting it up with another nice, English-speaking customer service rep. I explained the situation and that I wanted to cancel service on the dead TiVo. The rep noticed that my account has three TiVos on it and set off to get authorization to wave the $150 transfer fee. A few minutes later and I was all good to go. All I need do now is send in my old TiVo and I should have brand new (refurbished I assume) TiVo. The entire process took about thirty minutes.
I have to say that the experience was beyond my expectations. From the unbelievably short wait times to the well spoken representatives, TiVo really has their act together. I only hope the company doesn’t fold and end up gobbled up by some crappy company that will offshore the support and gouge me for every penny I’ve got.
Another interesting tidbit I learned from the customer service rep was that when the HD TiVos finally ship, I can transfer service from one of my existing TiVos to the new box. This would keep me from adopting TiVos new price model, which favors higher monthly fees. Let’s just hope I wasn’t getting smoke blown up my exhaust port.