$99 lifetime offer

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I'm talking about lower-case-u unions, not the Civil War.

Come to think of it, I did not agree to any service contracts when I bought my TiVos...

 

I spoke the cs about buying the Elite from tivo at full price as long as I could get the $7/month. He declined & offered me a free accessory. He did say he spoke with his supervisor & there was no box to fill in for the discount.

Has anyone ever gotten a discount from tivo on an Elite?

 

I called Tivo today. The cs told me it is $12.95/month, and $499 for lifetime. No luck.

 

think I explained adequately enough why taking the initiative, spending time and doing work has value, and the difference between doing all that work and simply accepting an offer. Also bear in mind that I'm not just talking about TiVo. I'm talking about the industry-wide practice of taking customer loyalty for granted.

Whenever I call my cellular provider with questions or service changes, they always make a point to look up how long I've been a customer and tell me that they appreciate having my patronage for over a decade. The mere act of taking notice and saying "thank you" doesn't cost them a cent, and goes a long way towards building good will.

You do have to take the initiative and make the effort to go to the TiVo website, right? Right.

I already have two lifetime service deals, and I can get a Premier for $99 at Best Buy. I already have a $1200 hole in my wallet (and 2 S2 DT boxes gathering dust) to keep my original, first issue lifetime service attached to my HD boxes. After getting scammed into buying the DTs (they said it was a one-time opportunity to transfer my lifetime service) and having little choice but to throw good money after bad to have HD capability, it was mighty insulting for TiVo to offer to take another huge chunk of cash to beta test a machine I don't want with more lifetime service than I need.

If you're happy with offers like that, well God bless you. I'll keep my money in my pocket and my personal integrity no lower.

The only thing I will consider involves keeping my original, unlimited lifetime service, not the new "strings everywhere" lifetime contract. And I'm not willing to pay a cent more than retail for the hardware. For a hack-proofed Premiere that offers way to little in return for the lock-down, I'm willing to try one for free.

TiVo lost my good will all by themselves. I was a faithful and loyal customer before Premier came out. I did my part and more. Now it's up to TiVo to decide whether they want to earn my trust anew, or find out if they can lure enough new suckers to keep their now nothing special company afloat. I'm a FOSS user, and TiVo needs my kind a whole lot more than my kind needs TiVo.

 

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for a premiere?

 

I think you have TiVo confused with other companies. You do understand that this thread is about what retention offers people get when they are canceling TiVo service, right? As far as I know retention offer pricing has never been made to new customers.

Buying a service is no different than buying a physical product. Buyer and Seller both get to negotiate and both get to walk away if they don't want to do the deal.

No reason at all, in fact people have been doing what you outlined for a long time. They are called cooperatives. When I was young my family were dairy farmers we were in both buying and selling cooperatives. They are member owned organizations designed to provide group buying and/or selling power. Some work fine some don't, if they grow large enough they will either fail or basically become like a business.

I think you missed my point. Prices change all the time and in simplest terms they are set by what the buyers are willing to pay.

You are certainly free to try and setup any type cooperative you would like. All I can tell you is that they are lots of work and time consuming (unless you pay someone to do it and then the $$ savings goes down fast).

While business certainly are not "entitled" to ever-increasing profits they are entitled to try to make ever increasing profits and I expect any company that I invest in to be doing so.

 

"faithful and loyal customer" Now that is an amusing statement. I have to assume your idea of what a "faithful and loyal customer" would be is completely different than mine.

Faithful and loyal doesn't mean you just bought something from someone. It means you bought something even though you had a equal alternative at a lower price or superior quality alternatives at the same price. Effectively you gave business to someone when you new it was not in your best interests.

So did you buy a TiVo when you new you could have bought a equal product at a lower price or a superior product for the same price?

I can say with near 100% assurance I will never be a "faithful and loyal customer". I have owned 5 TiVos and I bought them all because I thought they were the best deal for me at the time. If I buy another one it will be for the same reason not because I like TiVo Inc..

 

What the cs/sales guy said was, the elite is their 'latest & greatest' so there's no discounts yet. He referenced the XL & said there had just started to be discounts on that. IIRC, the premiere came out in early 2010 & started having discounts in nov along with the $20 monthly rate. I gotta think they'll be some discounts on the elite happening by the end of the year.

 

It's Tivo S3.

 

The end of the year?! We are only 19 days into the year - the promise of something "by the end of the year" is rather remote...

 

well, yeah but... but.. it gives a time frame. Hopefully they'll still have the $99LT offer going for older units.

eta; there was no promise by the cs/sales guy, that was my guesstimation.

 

http://www.tivo.com/abouttivo/policies/tivoserviceagreement.html

Please note that without a subscription to the TiVo service, your TiVo DVR will not work! Please see Section 7, above. The TiVo service will be terminated at the end of the service period for which you have paid and unused subscription fees are nonrefundable. If you terminate your account or this Agreement before meeting any applicable Service Commitment, TiVo reserves the right to charge you the early termination fee agreed to by you at the time you subscribed to the TiVo service.

Section 15

maybe you can negotiate that in your next contract, let me know how that works out for you!

┌∩┐

 

Yeah...about that...

I don't see any connection between the fact that I bought my TiVo hardware without service agreements and you reciting a 2008 service agreement that I'm not a party to. Do you have a point?

BTW, what makes you think I need luck, or have any desire to negotiate any "next contract" with TiVo? Two lifetime service accounts are enough for me. And it would be foolish to give up the original lifetime service offer terms now! As unitron said so well: "Once it's lifetimed, it's lifetimed.."

 

I called just to cancel my Series 3HD since I have just upgraded to Premier and they really pushed hard to get me to keep it active for $99LT. I said it was just sitting under my bed so I really didn't need it so he hit me with a 2 day opportunity to think about it and call him back. All you have to do it seems is ask to cancel your service.

 

Take the offer and sell the HD with lifetime. It is worth more on ebay than it is under your bed.

 

Its worth $300+ on ebay once you add the PLS.

 

All you have to do is ask to cancel the service on your HD once you buy a Premiere and sub it.

There's always a catch.

 

My youngest daughter has been after me to put tivo in her room and I have beenthinking seriously about it due to our main famiily tivo getting filled with shows like "Pretty Little Liars", "The Secret Circle" and "The Lying Game" (basically anything on ABC Family and some things on CW- OK, I admit I like "Nikita" and "Supernatural" ).

Since I transfered service from a couple of HD units to my Premieres, they are still sitting in my basement storage area. So, I called in to try to get he $99 lifetime on one of them for her. I got the standard $399 lifetime/$9.99 monthly offer.

After I said I had heard about a $99 lifetime offer, they then said, they never heard of it and it doesn't exist. So, pulling out the big guns, I told the girl I had converted one of my HD's to lifetime a couple of months ago for $99, she then said that the offer was over.

I try not to get frustrated and I did remain calm, but I did ask her which was true- she never heard of it or, it ended. All she could say was that she couldn't give it to me.

I decided not to go any further with that one. Sheesh.

 

My $99 PLS offer came back in October via e-mail. It was valid until 12/31/11.

This was an S2 DT that I had canceled at the end of April '11 and there are no active units on my account.

I let the offer lapse without action.

I'm not sure what if any offer I can get now but that unit was able to be re-activated on month-to-month $12.95 before I got the $99 deal.

Month-to-month shows up automatically thru the website whereas the Lifetime offer required me to call in.