Knowing what I know now, I might have made a better choice

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Hello Tivo Community forums.

I have owned my Romio boxes and have been a Tivo subscriber for close to 6 months now.
I sure wish I had met the current "me" back when I was deciding whether or not to pull the trigger on switching to Tivo, buying the Tivo boxes
and paying the monthly service.

I would have cautioned that in South Florida, it has been my experience that being a Comcast Xfinity user, that Comcast knows very little about
Tivo, M Cards, instillation of the Tivo box, and little information on whether I would have access to On Demand features.

I had 3 techs to the house in the first 7 days of the install. We went through 5 M-Cards.

Each technician told me emphatically that I would not have access to On Demand(turns out it is possible, just not in the conventional sense ie through the onscreen channel guide). The fact that none of Comcast's technicians knew this astounded me.

If I would have met the current "me", I would have explained how Comcast makes the grouping of the channels for HD users frustrating when using a Tivo unit. Comcast's dvr
automatically determines whether or not the program is offered in HD and will default to that channel. Tivo users don't have it so easy. For example, HBO HD is 301, and the other HBO HD Channels are in the 400's, basically making scrolling through your channels a frustrating and confusing experience.

The biggest point I am trying to make, is that Comcast spends little to no time educating their employees about working with Tivo.
And why should they? After all, they want me using their equipment. They make more money if I throw my hands up in the air in frustration with Tivo, scrap it all in the garbage, and defeatedly return back to the dvr's they rent.

The above issues were frustrating enough. But...as these things tend to do, enough time passed that I overlooked the initial issues and tried to make best of my Tivo purchase (convincing my wife has not been as easy).

This weekend, I decided to purchase a Pay Per View event. Sounds simple enough right? It's 2015. Payperview has been around for a long time. How hard could it be? I wanted to watch the UFC fight. I am also a new parent and I don't have a plethora of free time to waste on customer-support phone calls. Based on my past experiences and to save time in case no one at Comcast knows how to facilitate a Tivo user pay per view request, I decided to call Tivo first.

It has been my experience that Tivo knows what can and cannot happen with their units. The Tivo customer service rep assured me I would have no problem ordering and viewing the fight, but we would need to make a 3 way call with Comcast. The agent did say it would take a little time. I decided to call back after putting my child down for the evening. Upon calling back, I spoke with another person at Tivo who said their supervisor did not want him making a 3 way call and assured me that I could do it on my own. Feeling less than hopeful I called Comcast.

1 hour and 4 Comcast techs later and I was still not watching my pay per view event.

The 5th tech was able to get the event for me but not in high def, even though I have a high def tv and watch high def channels.

I spent $49.95 and the event was not available to me the next day, even though Comcast told me I would have access to the event for 48hrs. Another hour with Comcast phone support and still no resolution or explanation. I ultimately had to load up my child, drive to the local office and speak to them directly.

3 Days dealing with the consequences from desiring to order pay perview.

Again, the point I am trying to make is that a simple thing like ordering pay perview is NOT SIMPLE with Tivo and Comcast. It is possible, if you get the right tech, if you have the time to be left on hold and if you have plenty of patience.

I called Tivo today asking why they don't do more to bridge the gap for their customers who want to use basic 2015 cable functions? They kept blaming Comcast. And I understand that Comcast is to blame.

But why would Tivo not want to assist in making things easier for me to use their service? Why are their no articles on how to successfully order pay perview? Tivo should put that out as they know their own product and Comcast does not care about Tivo. You can't leave it up to Comcast. Tivo could dedicate a few man hours and clear this up for their users. Whatever the cost, it would pay for itself in deterring current customers from scrapping their Tivo service and keep them from cautioning others about the perils of switching to Tivo(like I find myself doing all the time). Tivo makes me the consumer, feel like I need a masters degree in Comcast/Tivo compatibility and yet no courses are provided to learn how.

They leave the burden on the user. And what it has done is left me feeling stupid for buying the costly Tivo service and Tivo boxes in the first place. I need easy. Time is money. Time is precious. Tivo should know that.

Peace and Love, Peace and Love

 

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Thank you very much. Truth be told, I just found this forum today.

 

mattack: what I was attempting to explain (though at the time my clarity was clouded by rage from speaking to Tivo customer service 5 minutes before I posted this... so I obviously did a poor job of explaining) is that in my area, Comcast has Channel 1 on my channel guide dedicated to On Demand. They have channel 299 dedicated to HBO On Demand. Neither of those work for the Tivo user. As all of you know (though my Comcast Install Techs did not) is that if I go through Tivo Central> Find TV, Movies, & Videos> I can access the Xfinity On Demand Screen sandwiched between the VUDU and the Netflix options.