You CAN submit a claim against TiVo (UK) Ltd for loss of service

[unitron]

Originally Posted by TCM2007

My personal view is that in maintaining the service for so long after it stopped being sold...

After the service stopped being sold, or the hardware?

[unitron]

Originally Posted by Mark Bennett

I know Sky handled the (in my case Lifetime) subscription.

But they certainly didn't sell it to me! They were just the agents that handled the subs. They answered the phone as Tivo, never mentioned Sky etc. If it had not been for this forum (waaaay back then!) I would not have known that the Tivo subscriptions were handled by Sky. I guess that could be the same for many users.
There are many service companies that answer the phone as, and represent various different companies - all from one help centre. The Activation/Subscription being done via Sky's agents could easily have been following that model.

Didn't mean to kick off another argument - sorry for that!

Back on page 2 TCM2007 says

"You also seem to not want to read the actual agreement. Our contracts were with TiVo."

in answer to Steve_K's

"As I've posted before, the biggest weakness in suing TiVo is it may well turn out that our contracts were actually with BSkyB."

so I can't tell if he's taking Sky's side against the customer or taking TiVo's side against the customer.

I need to go back and see if there are any posts where he sides with the customer, just to complete my confusion.

[TCM2007]

Originally Posted by Trinitron

There is little doubt that TiVo, Inc. controlled the business but something went through the UK company accounts.

One interesting snippet of info I recently dug up is that TiVo (UK) Ltd. is officially reported as having ceased trading on 3 May 2002. Yet I got a letter on TiVo (UK) letterhead in December 2002. It had a turnover of £3.4M in its 21 months of operation.

The tenner a month fees went somewhere after TiVo UK became dormant.

So in reality at various times the relationship has been with TiVo Inc, and with TiVo UK, without end users being informed of any change.

[TCM2007]

I was replying to a post that Sky had "no hand" in the sale. They patently did. But the contract was of course with TiVo. The two things are in no way contradictory.

Not taking any sides, discussing issues of fact.

[unitron]

Originally Posted by rwtomkins

This is a claim against TiVo (UK) Ltd, which was the company that sold me my lifetime subscription. It has been responded to by a very large firm of international corporate lawyers who said they had been appointed to represent TiVo (UK) Ltd. They didn't say who had appointed them or who was paying their fees but since TiVo (UK) Ltd is dormant one can only assume that it's TiVo Inc...

Just for sheer entertainment value, I'd like to see it turn out to be someone other than TiVo, Inc. footing the bill.

Like, say, the Illuminati, or the Bilderbergers, or the Tri-Lateral Commission, or the Templars, or the Free Masons...


(or somebody whose initials are Richard Branson)

[unitron]

Originally Posted by TCM2007

I was replying to a post that Sky had "no hand" in the sale. They patently did. But the contract was of course with TiVo. The two things are in no way contradictory.

Not taking any sides, discussing issues of fact.

Mark Bennet said

"I bought mine in either Curry's or Comet."

He gave them money. He left the store with the hardware. How does that not constitute a sale?

[TCM2007]

It's part of the sale; a TiVo sale has two parts, buying the hardware and buying the service. One is useless without the other.

He did not leave the store with a working TiVo.

[Mark Bennett]

OK, we all know Sky handled the activations.

But they didn't say they were Sky, they said they were Tivo.

I worded my original post in this thread badly (or at least in a way that could be picked to bits!)
Perhaps I need to engage a legal team to proof every post before hitting "Submit Reply"

[alek]

Originally Posted by unitron

Like, say, the Illuminati, or the Bilderbergers, or the Tri-Lateral Commission, or the Templars, or the Free Masons...

It's actually a conspiracy started right back in the sixties, it's the real reason that Lee Harvey Oswald was shot.

He was about to blow the lid off a secret plot to defraud a handfull of brits out of £199.


Alek

A reliable source has further informed me that Tivo ceo Tom Rogers is the grandson of a lady who once sold an ice cream to Jack Ruby.

[sjp]

if he knew all those years ago what the secret plot to defraud was about, he should have got the patents - his estate would be loaded by now

[alek]

Originally Posted by sjp

if he knew all those years ago what the secret plot to defraud was about, he should have got the patents - his estate would be loaded by now

Read latest breakthrough above.

It's all coming together now, arrests are imminent.

Alek

[rwtomkins]

Just to keep you up to date, TiVo filed its defence which is much as previously outlined and the claim has been allocated to a certain county court in London. Both sides now have to fill in an allocation questionnaire by July 18 and the London court will then look at the case and determine whether it is indeed suitable for the small claims track. (It's a small claim, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be.) Although TiVo said it was going to contest the court's jurisdiction, I haven't seen any paperwork on that so I can only assume I'm not a part of that process and it's between TiVo and the court. I think TiVo and its lawyers recognise that they are in a very weak position since they have no defence to the substance of the claim and therefore I imagine they will try very hard to prevent the case coming to court in the first place, either by asserting that the English courts have no jurisdiction over the contract, or by asserting that the claim should go to a higher court than the small claims court, or most likely, both. I will keep you posted so if you're interested, please check back from time to time, even if this forum does go a bit quiet!

Oh yes, and today I eventually got around to sending an email to the TiVo staff member in Alviso who phoned me a week or two ago. I said, politely, that I thought he had been misinformed over the reasons for TiVo's withdrawal of the TiVo service in the UK, since his account didn't seem to fit with the facts, and also that he must have been misinformed over the idea that TiVo was looking for further partners in the UK since TiVo's deal with Virgin Media was exclusive. I also said that the FAQ on TiVo's website didn't seem to amount to much so all in all I couldn't see any reason not to proceed with my claim against TiVo UK which was proceeding very nicely through the judicial system.

I had another letter from TiVo's lawyers, too. Nothing new but the amount TiVo is racking up in lawyers' fees over this one tiny claim must be staggering.

[unitron]

Originally Posted by rwtomkins

Just to keep you up to date, TiVo filed its defence which is much as previously outlined and the claim has been allocated to a certain county court in London. Both sides now have to fill in an allocation questionnaire by July 18 and the London court will then look at the case and determine whether it is indeed suitable for the small claims track. (It's a small claim, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be.) Although TiVo said it was going to contest the court's jurisdiction, I haven't seen any paperwork on that so I can only assume I'm not a part of that process and it's between TiVo and the court. I think TiVo and its lawyers recognise that they are in a very weak position since they have no defence to the substance of the claim and therefore I imagine they will try very hard to prevent the case coming to court in the first place, either by asserting that the English courts have no jurisdiction over the contract, or by asserting that the claim should go to a higher court than the small claims court, or most likely, both. I will keep you posted so if you're interested, please check back from time to time, even if this forum does go a bit quiet!

Oh yes, and today I eventually got around to sending an email to the TiVo staff member in Alviso who phoned me a week or two ago. I said, politely, that I thought he had been misinformed over the reasons for TiVo's withdrawal of the TiVo service in the UK, since his account didn't seem to fit with the facts, and also that he must have been misinformed over the idea that TiVo was looking for further partners in the UK since TiVo's deal with Virgin Media was exclusive. I also said that the FAQ on TiVo's website didn't seem to amount to much so all in all I couldn't see any reason not to proceed with my claim against TiVo UK which was proceeding very nicely through the judicial system.

I had another letter from TiVo's lawyers, too. Nothing new but the amount TiVo is racking up in lawyers' fees over this one tiny claim must be staggering.

Make 'em bleed.

[pemills]

Watching with fascination where this leads, lawyers are definitely not cheap so this is going to hurt them in the pocket one way or another (:-)

[WhiskeyTango]

Originally Posted by rwtomkins

Nothing new but the amount TiVo is racking up in lawyers' fees over this one tiny claim must be staggering.

I doubt that. They have a legal department that I'm sure is capable of handling a small claims suit. Those guys are getting paid whether they are doing anything or not. They could probably have a paralegal handle this.

[davesh]

I just hope the entertainment value of reading these posts is worth the price we're all paying to fund this ( frivolous ? ) action through our taxes .

Dave

[SolidTechie]

Originally Posted by WhiskeyTango

They have a legal department that I'm sure is capable of handling a small claims suit.

In a "foreign" country? I can't think why they would have experts in the British legal system on staff. And it would be a foolish legal department that tried to contest a case under laws with which they are not familiar.

In any event, I believe the point is moot, since it has already been stated:

Originally Posted by rwtomkins

They have taken on a VERY large, well-known (and expensive) firm of international corporate lawyers to represent them in this case

[topbanana]

Originally Posted by davesh

I just hope the entertainment value of reading these posts is worth the price we're all paying to fund this ( frivolous ? ) action through our taxes .

Dave

Frivolous would be debatable. In terms of financial recompense, it might possibly be so. However, slapping a company for failing to honour a lifetime guarantee/uncapped use/unlimited refills/waterproof to 10 meters promise is always worthwhile. In large part, this is what the SCC's there for.

[rwtomkins]

Just to pass the time while waiting to hear from the court, I think I've worked out why everyone at TiVo Inc is under the misapprehension that we're BSkyB customers. When TiVo first announced its plans to enter the UK market in 2000, it was through a "strategic alliance" with BSkyB. The idea was that the UK TiVo service would be aimed mainly at BSkyB customers who would use the new TiVo box alongside their Sky Digibox to record programming received through the Sky satellite service. The TiVo boxes would be co-branded with the Sky and TiVo names and BSkyB would heavily promote and market them to its Sky customers. Demand was expected to be such that several electronics manufactures would be involved in manufacturing the Sky/TiVo boxes. As an aside, it was also envisaged that these boxes would function with terrestrial analogue television services but this was seen more as an add-on than as a prime function.

As we know, things turned out very differently. Behind the scenes, even as it signed the deal, BSkyB was probably already working on its own version of the TiVo service and it's tempting to speculate that it only ever signed the deal with TiVo to stymie TiVo's prospects of emerging as a competitor in the UK. In any event the co-branded Sky/TiVo boxes never emerged and BSkyB never promoted the TiVo service to its Sky customers. Presumably as a result, TiVo signed a deal with Thomson later in 2000 for the manufacture of a "standalone" TiVo box called the Scenium, not linked to any particular service, but this had very poor sales because BSkyB certainly wasn't going to promote it and TiVo couldn't afford to do so on its own. The following year BSkyB launched its own Sky+ PVR and started marketing that to its UK customers instead of the TiVo box, which was effectively the end of TiVo in the UK. What's amazing is that even after this TiVo maintained a relationship with BSkyB, giving the company a huge amount of TiVo stock (in lieu of cash) for services rendered (not!) and for continuing to operate a call centre operation for UK TiVo customers.

The thing is, the people at TiVo Inc only seem to know the first part of this story and are stuck in a mindset where they believe we are all BSkyB customers who bought our TiVo machines primarily to work with the Sky satellite service. It's not surprising in a way because there was a lot of fanfare about that original BkyB "alliance" whereas of course the way in which it came so badly unstuck was never talked about. It seems that TiVo's co-founders, who were running TiVo Inc at the time, were played for a couple of patsies by Rupert Murdoch who was somewhat more experienced in the media business than they.

[TCM2007]

Originally Posted by rwtomkins

In any event the co-branded Sky/TiVo boxes never emerged and BSkyB never promoted the TiVo service to its Sky customers.

Yes it did; before the upgrade to 2.5.5 there was a Sky logo on the main menu page, and there was a Sky sticker on the packaging. There is still a trace of it if you trigger the start up animation - it appears top right right at the end.

And Sky did promote TiVo to their customer base.

TiVo couldn't afford to do so on its own.

They ran quite a large ad campaign in press, TV and cinema, but it was of arguable quality.

The following year BSkyB launched its own Sky+ PVR and started marketing that to its UK customers instead of the TiVo box, which was effectively the end of TiVo in the UK. What's amazing is that even after this TiVo maintained a relationship with BSkyB, giving the company a huge amount of TiVo stock (in lieu of cash) for services rendered (not!) and for continuing to operate a call centre operation for UK TiVo customers.

The stock was in lieu of future services, and was done in the knowledge that TiVo were pulling out - effectively lowering the cash cost of maintaining S1's in the UK. I have speculated that the stopping of S1 EPG might be related to that 2002 "no cash" deal expiring.

The thing is, the people at TiVo Inc only seem to know the first part of this story and are stuck in a mindset where they believe we are all BSkyB customers who bought our TiVo machines primarily to work with the Sky satellite service.

I think it's a bit simpler; TiVo always called us BSkyB subscribers internally as as far as they are concerned the names and addresses and of course cash come from BSkyB (who take our credit card details) not us. So to them we are BSkyB subscribers (subscribers to TiVo via BSkyB). That's got a bit Chinese whispered down the years.

[Steve_K]

Yep I'd echo all that. Especially the poor quality of the TiVo ad campaign. Going on and on about pausing live TV when the real benefit was near care free recording and as someone even posted here: creating your own TV channel

All spillt milk under the bridge now but a tragic waste of an opportunity.

[rwtomkins]

What I hadn't realised before, in all these years, was that TiVo in the UK was originally intended to be sold to, and used by, primarily BSkyB customers in conjunction with their Sky Digiboxes, not as a standalone unit. I think that goes a long way to explaining why TiVo to this day thinks we are all or nearly all BSkyB customers, why it calls us that in the latest version of the terms and conditions and why in that conversation I had with TiVo a couple of weeks ago, the staff member who called me was convinced that we were receiving our daily EPG from BSkyB.

Anyway, as I say, just passing the time. That staff member didn't reply to my email, by the way, but it didn't particularly call for a reply so that's OK.

[TCM2007]

Sky was definitely their strongest potential market at that time. Freeview and Freesat didn't exist and paid terrestrial was struggling. Sky customers had shown that they were prepared to pay for TV - selling £10 a month to an analogue only customer was always going to be very hard.

[rwtomkins]

Originally Posted by TCM2007

Freeview and Freesat didn't exist...

Oddly, although my welcome letter is dated June 2002 and Freeview didn't then exist, the instruction manual gives instructions for hooking the TiVo up to a digital set-top box as an alternative to the Sky Digibox (or an analogue cable box, or just a TV antenna). I wonder how that could be? Was it a reference to the OnDigital service or was the manual simply anticipating the launch of Freeview?

Originally Posted by TCM2007

...selling £10 a month to an analogue only customer was always going to be very hard.

Definitely. If you were getting your analogue TV pretty much for free, and already had a TV set and a VCR, paying an extra £600 (box + lifetime sub) for the TiVo service seemed an astronomical sum at the time. It did to me, anyway!

[TCM2007]

I had two TiVos then, one on Sky, one on OnDigital.

[AMc]

I bought mine to work with OnDigital - there was no other reliable way to record more than one TV show. An OnDigital timer set to wake the VCR worked but never stopped the tape - so it was good for one episode of ER.
It was a minor gamble to pick up Tivo for £230 as I knew you got the grace period to see if it worked. I ended up moving it to Telewest cable almost immediately.

[DX30]

A bit off topic but prior to getting a TiVo I used a VCR to record from an ONdigital box. You set the timer (including channel) on the VCR and the VCR had an IR blaster it used to select the approriate channel on the ONdigital box. This allowed you to set the VCR to record multiple programmes on different channels.

The VCR could also control a Sky digibox in a similar way.

Still there was no guide data and even at EP you were limited to 9 hours recording time so the TiVo was an enormous step forward. Like TCM2007 I ended up with two TiVos, one for Sky and one for ONdigital.

[sjp]

and so the circle completes... what these ondigital/analog & early digital sky boxes needed was... wait for it... REMINDERS!

a decade and a half on and them pesky VM tivo newbies are still demanding them

[sellmynumber]

I've been reading this thread for some time now and I'm usually one for supporting the man in the street but rwtomkins whilst your legal action is commendable I believe your case is weak to the point where it will simply be chucked out and you possibly billed with the costs from the other side.

I own a Tivo S1 (now redundant and I'm pretty peeved that it is) but I'd say the lifetime membership of which I am once such subscriber to has served me well and done it's job.Things do expire and whilst I'd like nothing more than the dial-up service to resume I doubt it will happen.

To answer another point in here, I purchased my Tivo when they were being sold off by Curry's and Comet for £99, some of them were shop display units that came with a lifetime on them courtesy of the shop. others came with a monthly subscription which the shop had obviously purchased but when selling them off didn't appear to cancel them, my friends whose Tivo was just that...was working until they all went down in June....

If anything I would say that Tivo are more than likely here reading and collating the data from this thread, it is altogether ridiculous that you discuss your case in such an open manner, you will have very little to surprise them (Tivo) with at court...

Give it up whilst you still have the shirt on your back.

[Steve_K]

"I believe your case is weak to the point where it will simply be chucked out and you possibly billed with the costs from the other side."

Very broad brush statement that

And what actually do you see as (a) the weaknesses and (b) the ability of the defendant to be the first in history to reclaim costs from a small claims fast track case?

I think most here think TiVo UK's only defence is to say they are but helpless minions totally owned but never consulted by TiVo Inc in making their decisions.

Which then leaves the route open to claim off TiVo Inc