Whenever my Tivo/DirecTV box dies, I'm bailing on DirecTV

[catocony]

I was a happy DirecTV customer for 8 years, and a happy Tivo/DirecTV customer for the last 4 of those. However, I've had nothing but issues with DirecTV over the past 8 months, and the recent DST issue has broken this camel's back.

I don't have hardline telephone service anymore - just Vonage, which is cheap yet sucks but it's what I'll have for at least four more months while I'm working away from my home. My Tivo box simply won't work across Vonage - and I've tried every trick from this board to make it work. I accept the fact that I don't need a phone line - just erase the daily nastygram concerning the fact that I hadn't made a daily call in over 8 months.

However, this afternoon, I had a robocall from DirecTV about the need to upgrade the code for the DST swichover tonight. Wow, all of 12 hours notice that the code on my box wouldn't cut the mustard.

To make a long story short, I took down my box, drove to a friend's house, unhooked one of his Tivo units from the sat feed and TV, plugged mine in in place, made the call, downloaded the code, then did a manual restart to make sure all was good.

My beef is, one, the incredibly last minute notice - I received a message this afternoon via Tivo messageing system, about the same time the robocall came through. I called DirecTV and after 10 minutes was told "well, you need a phone line and without it you can't have Tivo" "Well, that's not accurate and besides, that's not my concern, my concern was the last minute notification" "Well, if you had a phone line, you would have already had the download. Tivo doesn't work without a phone line" "yes, it does, and for me has done so for over 8 months. Again, my concern is not that I have a hardline or not, it's the lack of notification" "We wouldn't have to notify you if you had a phone line"

Back when I attempted to swap out my Tivo/DirecTV box for the ultra-crappy DirecTV private label DVR service - the DVR that shipped with no documentation so I had no chance of figuring out it's horrendous menu system - I made it clear in no uncertain way that in the first 7 years of DirecTV service, I made all of four calls to DirecTV - one to activate the original decoders, one to schedule a move, one to activate my Tivo box and one last July to schedule my temporary move. But, in the last 8 months, I've made 23 calls to DirecTV for a variety of billing and service issues, a lot related to the very confusing Tivo/DirecTV divorce that is ongoing.

I'm seriously considering just going to standalone Tivo service when I move back home and going with Cox for digital cable and severing ties with DirecTV. I'll need to get cable modem service back from Cox anyways, even though I've had battle royals with them over the years regarding cable modem issues and TV before switching to satellite. I guess I could get DSL from Verizon but then again I'm still waiting on resolutions to problems from shutting off Verizon phone service 8 months ago.

Actually, now that I think about it, and it has nothing to do with watching "Jericho", I'm kinda hoping for an EMP to hit the eastern US so I don't have to worry about phones, TV or internet access ever again. Dealing with any telecom company customer service is life-draining experience, and I've been a vendor SE in the internet space for 15 years.

Sorry for the rant, just shouting out to see if anyone else went through the same hassle today as I did.

[DonDon]

Well, after the frightening last minute phone call that you need to do a software update, this ought to really tick you off.

Unless you do manual recordings, you don't need to do the update right now.

Your regular recordings are done off of GMT, which does not change with DST.

I have 2 hacked boxes that are running good that I am not updating. Of course I will verify on Sunday morning that things are still working properly, but from what I can tell, I should have no problems as I do not do any manual recordings.

Even if you do manual recordings, a little experimentation would show you which way to manually adjust your manual recording to capture the show. You would have to undo the changes in 3 weeks though. Then apply them again for a week in the fall.

I may need to do the update down the line, at my leasure if I hear they are making the infamous guide data changes again, but I will burn that bridge later.

Happy TIVOING.

Don

[catocony]

I should have wrote that I logged in here and read threads, but I had already IMed a friend and he was unplugging his system when I was still dealing with the idiots at DirecTV while simultainously reading threads here.

I learned 8 months ago to come here before calling DirecTV for any technical issue, those idiots give out more guilt and false information than the Roman Catholic Church.

I guess it's good to get the latest release, and to not have nastygrams for two weeks. I was really much more pissed off about the late notice than the DST issue, I knew that was basically bogus. My beefs are the notification delay and the continuously bad information they give to customers. DirecTV prefers to scare and browbeat their customers instead of giving them accurate information, which seems to be the way of the world of telecom companies these days. I guess they have to assume they are dealing with an ignorant customer who understands zero about technology. It's always bad when me and guys like me who are engineers have to call in to any company for technical issues, I have little patience for a tier-1 monkey reading off a script about "rebooting your system" and the other basic idiot questions they ask before actually sending you to someone who can help.

[DonDon]

Yea, I hear you. Most of the Technology companies are just worried about separating us from and many of our dollars as they think they can get away with.

I am only waiting for the Series 3 Tivos to get down in price to a more realistic level, or for Comcraps tivo box to be released and get decent reviews and then I will dump DTV also. It's such a shame such a great company went into the crapper so quickly.

Tivo on my friend.

Don

[catocony]

Prior to 8 months ago I raved about DirecTV. The problem is that I no longer seperate Tivo from DirecTV - Tivo is a necessity IMHO and DirecTV is doing all they can to ween customers to their inferior service. I guess I just went for so many years without any reason to engage them that now, with the move and the lack of a hardline for Tivo and the billing issues, their crappy customer service has been exposed to me.

I like the service, I love the XM radio now instead of the private label music (which was ok), but they need to be much more attentive to their remaining Tivo customers. I have an R15 sitting on my floor that I'll use as a second receiver when I move back home but it's crap compared to Tivo, and I can't think of the last time I watched a non-sporting event in real time.

By the way, when the R15 showed with no docs, I called in to have a book sent out. They said there was no way it could have shipped without, then said it would be no problem to get one out to me. After a week I remembered I hadn't received it and called back in. They said they couldn't send one and suggested I go on-line to read the doc. When I said that my computer is nowhere near the DirecTV they said "you could string a cable and move your monitor so you can read and do the DVR".

Morons.