2-year commitment for replacement HD Tivo?

They may try, but push back. Tell them no F'n way they can assess a commitment in order to meet *their* warranty commitment on the product. They cannot re-write your warranty.

 

If you search you will see that others have experienced this. What I would suggest that you do is ask for Customer Retention and deal only with them for this. They will do right by you where the first level phone monkey will offer resistance.

 

A commitment for a replaced HR10, driven either by niggling technical problems or by the need for MPEG-4, seems reasonable to me. I would not want to replace something I wasn't going to be committed to for a time, anyway.

But here's the qualification for that which I think we all should insist upon...if they are replacing a HR10 with a NDS box and are asking for a 2-year programming committment, I would expect THEM to ALSO commit to extending the warranty of said equipment to cover that period. There is no way that should not be reasonable to them, but I can see them not being upset about a 2-year commitment and a 90-day warranty, while if I don't get a warranty with equal coverage, I would definitely be upset.

Let's all be sure to hold their feet to the fire on this one.

 

Or, who cares right now, and wait to see if you cancel in that time frame. If you do, the worst they'd likely do is tell you to return the equipment to eliminate any fees. Since the equipment is useless to you at that point anyway (except perhaps for eBay), who cares?

Don't get all uptight until it matters. Life is too short.

 

Are you planning to cancel tomorrow? If not, then it really doesn't matter right now.

You can fight DirecTV all you want, but they don't care if you're not leaving today. If you want to activate, they get you for another two years. If/when you want to leave, deal with it then.

You have zero leverage with them when you're activating.

 

Normally I would agree with that, but this is a unique situation. The PVR and the service are married together. You could have the service without the PVR, but you could not have the PVR (or use it) without the service. That is why I would not be concerned about a PVR that doesn't work if it would only work with a service I was discontinuing anyway, and that's why a programming commitment seems reasonable to me.

They are meeting us half-way in a relationship that we both (the vendor and the customer) have a vested interest in. I'm happy to meet them the other half of the way and commit to service, because I would likely commit anyway. I get a PVR upgrade (we hope it turns out that way, at least) that they are paying for and they get insurance against me flipping out and cancelling after they underwrote that equipment. Everybody wins.

Where that becomes unfair, IMO, is if I commit to 2 years of service and my PVR replacement, a replacement for a PVR that I originally paid for, goes belly up 6 months in. If at such a point in time I am committed to programming and they won't stand behind the PVR should it need servicing, that to me is a deal-breaker. If I'm out of warranty and still am expected to keep their service for another 18 months I don't then have the luxury of telling them to F-off if they won't fix it, and that leaves me feeling a little bit over a barrel.

We have to prevent them from allowing that, and the only way to keep them from setting that precedence is for all of us to insist on a full warranty for the length of the programming commitment, and hold them to it. It's that simple, but we all have to be firm about that particular point.

 

You lost me. I thought we were speaking of imposing a new programming commitment on a customer at swapout, regardless of what other commitment might already be in place. The HR10 is not automatically a faulty device, I would think you could still use it for another few years, throughout its natural life, to continue to record any SD, MPEG-2, and OTA HD programs. The offer is to replace a used, perfectly good but slightly-obsolete device with a new one that is able to get all of today's and tomorrow's programming content. I also would imagine the swap is not just for the PVR, but for a new dish (and multiswitch, if needed,) plus a free install. I'm also pretty sure they won't be holding a gun to our heads, and you don't have to agree to the swapout or the commitment if you so choose.

If your HR10 actually IS acting funky, what better time to replace it? And get a new warranty to boot? The important thing is a warranty that covers the commitment. THAT we might have some say over, if we have solidarity on that. Whether there would be a commitment or not is going to be their decision, and I'm guessing their minds are already made up, so I intend to concentrate on the finer points that I might have some control over (warranty length) rather than those out of my control (whether there will be a commitment provision).

 

I think you're missing it TS. He's not speaking about a possible replacement to an MPEG-4 unit. What he is saying is that his HR0 is defective and needs to be replaced under it's warranty. He is simply going to have it replaced with a working unit.

Thus, this replacement should be done under the existing warranty provision which does not include any additional commitment by the customer..

 

I had my HDTiVo replaced under warrenty. There is a special phone number on the paperwork in the box that you call to activate the warrenty replacement unit, and they don't make you commit to another 2 years (at least they didn't when I called last year). I assume it's because this number is some sort of "warrenty repair activation" number.

 

If you're paying the monthly warrantee fee, then yes, they shouldn't extend your committment (although again, I say it doesn't matter except for that eBay revenue for you). If not, they don't really have to replace it for free, but they're doing it, subsidizing it, and asking you to commit to another 2 years (or return the equipment).

No biggie, and reasonable, and a non-issue for you right now anyway. Wait until you decide to cancel, or 24 months - whichever comes first - and deal with it then if you need to.

 

I've had a couple of units replaced under warranty and they did add a two year commitment, however, I called them and as soon as I told them that this was a warranty replacement and not a subsidized HD TiVo, they removed the two year commitment. What's just as interesting is that each time they sent me a warranty replacement, I was also sent a letter saying something like "Congratulations on your new HD TiVo . . . you're entitled to a $xxxx rebate . . . don't forget to send it in etc." Even though I guess I could have received the rebates, I knew I wasn't really entitled to the rebates so I just threw the letters away. The bottom line is that it appears that D* tracks these warranty replacements as new HD TiVos and NOT as warranty replacements and that is why the 2 year commitment shows up on the account. You'd think that D* would have a system in place to get this right, but obviously they don't since it happened to me two times.

 

No need to pay for DTV protection service. The HR10-250 has a one year warranty out of box and that warranty is provided and serviced by DirecTv. So they do have to replace it and they aren't subsidizing anything, just making the buyer whole again.

 

I replaced an HR10 under warranty in December. I called customer retention to activate it, explained it was a warranty replacement, and they DID NOT invoke a 2 year commitment.