Refurbished Series 3 problems

[ak66]

Hi

I bought a refurbished series 3 from the Tivo store to replace my old aging replay TVs and free myself from Comcast. For the three days that the machine worked, I was in love. Loved the features, the netflix streaming, the networking to the PC etc. But then everything went awry...

I have my machine connected to an OTA antenna receiving HD in Boston. Nothing fancy. It is also plugged into my network.

Today I went to watch my shows and the machine was responding VERY slowly (literally 2 minutes of please wait after every remote button push). I managed to work my way to stream a Netflix movie, which worked perfectly, and then after I had to pause to get a phone call everything started falling apart...

First, I decided to reboot. It rebooted over 15 minutes and then the Tivo Central screen appeared, and everything was frozen. I couldn't scroll up or down. Then I rebooted again, same thing. Went online read about the kickstart 57 trick and thought I'd try it. Nothing happened. It went back to the Tivo central screen with no response. I unplugged it again. Came back and thought I'd unplug the antenna. Lo and behold. The spiffy responsiveness I had for the first two days was back. Of course, without an antenna the unit is useless, but I thought OK, let me reboot and try the kickstart 57 without the antenna. WRONG MOVE. Now after the powering up screen I got nothing, nada. So I unplugged and rebooted again. I have spent 4 hours today rebooting this thing and am now at the point of sending it back.

Is this what I should expect from Tivo? I had a replay for 8 years without any problems. Did I go wrong by buying a refurb Series 3? Should I return it? What do you all think? Will Customer service be able to help me? Your thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.

[Joe-user21]

Hi - I had very similar symptoms on my Series 3 - not as a refurb, but a new unit, after a couple of months. I had a series of posts on here with a few others in the same boat. First we thought it was a bad software update, but my problem seemed to actually be a failing hard drive. (I had another Series 3 at the same SW level that was (and still is!) fine.) After a few long reboots, and repsonses to button presses getting longer and longer, it finally stopped responding altogether. Tivo replaced it and the new unit has been fine ever since.

I would call Tivo Customer Service. Good luck with yours.

[ak66]

Thanks for the reply. After another two hours I can say for sure that connecting the antenna causes the unit to stop responding. When I disconnect it, everything is back. I can watch youtube, netflix, play recorded shows, etc. Everything is snappy. When I plug it back in, and hit select on the remote, nothing happens. Even the background graphics slow down...

Hope that I don't have to return the unit, since I have barely had it for a week...

[markens]

Thanks for the reply. After another two hours I can say for sure that connecting the antenna causes the unit to stop responding. When I disconnect it, everything is back. I can watch youtube, netflix, play recorded shows, etc. Everything is snappy. When I plug it back in, and hit select on the remote, nothing happens. Even the background graphics slow down...
You've described a problem that a number of people have had. There's a long discussion about it in this thread:

http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=361087

[ciper]

I bet its bad sectors on the hard drive and the antenna strengthens my assertion.

No antenna means no recording of live TV buffer. The drive is essentially idle
With antenna means it's recording two (possibly HD) streams to drive right on top of the bad sectors.

[ak66]

Thanks. I read some of the posts in the thread mentioned above. Sounds like my introduction to Tivo will be through troubleshooting... :(

I am now running the K54 diagnostics to see if the HD is fried. I will then retry the K57 and K58 and if nothing works, will call tech support on Monday. Since I have only had the S3 for 6 days, I hope they will replace without charging me for shipping and handling and me having to wait a week or more to get a new box...

[ak66]

OK, it's one thing to have a malfunctioning unit sent to you from Tivo. It's my fault to have spent 6 hours troubleshooting, but is it really necessary for customer support to suck as well?

- Called Technical support. They asked me to try a different antenna, even after I told them that I had a FAIL 7 message in the extended SMART hard drive test. Then they said OK, you'll get an exchange but hung up on me.

- Called Technical support again. This time the person gave me a Case number and an RMA number and realized that they were planning to ship the exchange unit to my billing address... They also told me that they were charging me $840 unitl i sent my old box back (for which i paid $350!!!!!!!!!!!!). So 2 weeks without service that I am paying for.

- Called billing and the computers were down... Waited for 15 minutes.

-Called billing again. 15 minutes on hold. Then an agent who couldn't do anything. Then she talked to a supervisor and then they said that MAYBE they would credit me for a month.

Is this what I signed up for? I have time to return and cancel everything, go buy a desktop computer and not have to deal with this complete lack of respect for customers...

[markens]

OK, it's one thing to have a malfunctioning unit sent to you from Tivo. It's my fault to have spent 6 hours troubleshooting, but is it really necessary for customer support to suck as well?
To summarize the referenced thread: The most commonly accepted theory (in this forum, anyway) is that the described problem is due to a failing hard disk that cannot handle the write load of HD signals. The 30 minute buffers (one for each tuner) are being written whether they're being "recorded" or not. This explains why the freezing behavior stops when input coax is removed.

TiVo CSRs do not seem to have a consistent story about this. Seems most of them make customers jump through hoops even though the problem being described should be well known.

[ak66]

The saga continues...

So after being promised a confirmation email with RMA instructions and receiving nothing overnight, I called again.

The second rep who had me on the phone for 30 minutes and supposedly corrected everything apparently did nothing. She was polite, but incompetent.
They didn't have my email were shipping to my billing and were indicating 'no delivery' for the replacement unit when I asked them if it had shipped...

I am now on hold (for the 5th time) while they are trying to figure out what is going on.

Are there any Tivo employees on this forum? How can there be such gross incompetence?

[ak66]

Well, I figured I used this forum to vent my frustration, I might as well post that I have now received a replacement, which seems to behave much better than the first unit that I originally received from Tivo. The boot time is ~ 1-2 minutes to the Ready, Set, Tivo and not 15 minutes, like it was before, and the antenna doesn't seem to freeze the machine.

Lesson learned: Ask for a supervisor and an email address that you can contact them. It worked much better than hours on the phone with CSRs that didn't follow up on what they were supposed to be doing.

I hope that this Series 3 is a keeper.