The [Ninja Turtles] henchmen Bebop and Rocksteady have hijacked the musical genres for us just like the Lone Ranger hijacked the William Tell Overture for our parents.

- xkcd

Thursday, February 09, 2006

TiVo Watch II: TiVo Harder: The TiVo-ening ... Status Update 1


So last Sunday, a week and a half after I received confirmation that my TiVo had arrived at the TiVo service center, I started getting annoyed that I had not yet received my new TiVo. Frustrated and wanting some confirmation on the status of my replacement TiVo, I called the customer service number.

After about 10 minutes on hold ... during which they played annoying hold music the entire time. An operator comes on the line and wants to know what I'm calling about. Never mind that I went through thes stupid phone prompts to give them all this information before I ever talked to a human, they are then asking me for it again.

After I give her all my information, she says she's going to put me on hold for a second and look it up. About 5 minutes later she comes back on the line and says, "Now this is the TiVo that we just received on January XX, right?" I confirm and she asks me some more unrelated questions and then says that she's going to need to put me on hold for 2-3 more minutes to check on the status.

About 5 minutes later, she comes back on the line and is like, "Ok, it says here we just got it on January XX."

Too which I can only think, "Right, you said that before you put me on hold 5 minutes ago."

Then she continues on and says, "Well, our system says to expect to wait 5-7 business days from when it was supposed to ship out before we can take any action."

Argghh, did it really have to take 25 minutes of my time just for you to tell me that you can't do anything? So I ask her, "Well, my TiVo broke over two weeks ago and I've now lost at least 14 days off my warranty period because of your faulty product and poor shipping choice, could you at least reset my warranty back a couple days because of this?" To which, she obviously answers no and further clarifies that there is exactly zero things she can do for me.

So I hang up the phone frustrated and annoyed.

The next day though, I get another email from TiVo telling me that my unit is going to ship in 1 -2 Business Days. That's strange, I think, because I thought my TiVo was supposed to arrive in 1-2 days. Was that nice useless lady on the phone lying to me? The answer I think, would be yes.

So Early Wednesday morning I get another email from TiVo, this one has a tracking number for FedEx ground and an item list. It shows a scheduled arrival date of Friday, February 10. Great, I think to myself, it's going to come while I'm out of town. But as I check it out further, it says that the item they are shipping to me is an 80 hour TiVo. The original unit I sent in was a 40 hour unit. So I think they just bumped me up to a better unit.

I won't be able to comment for sure until I inspect the unit that actually arrives but I'm cautiously optomistic. If I just had to spend $8 for shipping and 2 weeks of non-TiVo-ness for an extra 40 hours of storage space, I'll be quite happy with the deal.

12 Comments:

At 2/09/2006 1:19 PM, Blogger Chuckles said...

Right on.

 
At 2/09/2006 1:45 PM, Blogger pop renaissance said...

i'd get tivo cos it would make that cable bill worth paying. i'll tell you now: there ain't NEVER anything on when i wanna watch tv. which is why i always end up watching serial killer shows.

i wanna get rid of the cable, though. i could use that $50 a month for another bag of marij...other things than cable.

 
At 2/09/2006 2:44 PM, Blogger Chuckles said...

$50 bucks! My landlord pays $80!

You guys get everything for free in Cali.

 
At 2/09/2006 4:44 PM, Blogger fulsome said...

I'll feel better then :)

C-dog - You get about 700 channels for $80, we get 17 for $50.

 
At 2/09/2006 5:40 PM, Blogger pop renaissance said...

...and 3 of the 17 i cannae translate.

 
At 2/09/2006 5:52 PM, Blogger teh l4m3 said...

What's the point of TiVo if there are no more Buffy re-runs anywhere, any time?

 
At 2/09/2006 8:58 PM, Blogger Chuckles said...

There's always the Stargate Channel. AKA SciFi.

Friday night shall be preempted by Arrested Development, however.

 
At 2/10/2006 10:38 AM, Blogger fulsome said...

Or -- you could watch one and TiVo the other - if you had one.

bwahaha

 
At 2/10/2006 10:54 AM, Blogger dontEATnachos said...

Or you can get two TiVos and TiVo both of them ...

What makes TiVos great is that you just have to think of it as scheduling a download of your show. Then you know that sometime on the weekend you'll have like 6-7 TV shows to watch.

Unfortunately for me, the Office and CSI are on at the same time. So I just TiVo the Office.

Still, I can TiVo Scrubs, Love Monkey, The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and the Office as well as a couple other shows that are on at odd times at night (like Hu$tle or Big O) and watch them at my leisure.

The only problem is that 1) I have a roommate so that even though I'm not watching TV he may be, so when it tries to switch the channel and record something, it annoys him (and also tells him that I'm trying to record What Not To Wear).

 
At 2/10/2006 10:55 AM, Blogger dontEATnachos said...

Problem 2) is that I have to bother watching all these episodes I TiVo and I don't really know if I have that much time. Still, at least I get to watch some and that's better than just missing everything because I'm at the gym.

 
At 2/10/2006 3:14 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Nacho, I feel like we are having an intimate relationship with your Tivo on this blog.

And I don't even feel like he's very satisifying which makes it worse.

 
At 2/10/2006 3:41 PM, Blogger fulsome said...

Well, AG at least when TiVo leaves the house we get to speak with dEn. Otherwise, it's work, gym, or TiVo...no time for the blogiverse.

 

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