[bpurcell]

I'm sorry, but you're ranting about having to spend 30 minutes on the phone to cancel your service??? I've had plenty of other subscriptions with various companies where I had to wait an hour or more. As for lack of online canceling, you're experience is EXACTLY why companies like TiVo require you to call. They don't want people to cancel off-the-cuff and hope to convince you to stay. That's hardly a TiVo-only practice. I don't know of any cable, satellite, or phone company that has online cancellation.

 

[bpurcell]

I cannot stand this kind of logic!

OP, your problem isn't legit because someone else once had to wait longer for something else. Also, other companies do this, and sometimes worse, so TiVo isn't at fault.

It's not a logic argument; it's a perspective argument. I frankly don't see anything bad that TiVo did.

He spent 30 minutes total to cancel his service. Yes, it's annoying but definitely not unusual in the tech subscription business.

He couldn't cancel online. This is common business practice to avoid people canceling on a whim.

They tried to offer him bonus months to keep the box subscribed. What's wrong with that? Again, this is common business practice. TiVo would be stupid NOT to offer specials to keep customers subscribed.

I know we all like to think of TiVo as a different kind of company, but they have shareholders just like any other public company. Their goal is to make a profit, first and foremost. I agree that their CSR need A LOT of improvement in customer relations (and their hold times do need to come down), but I am not going to fault them for doing common sense business practices.

 

[bpurcell]

When I'm on hold I always vision a group of employee's betting how long I will hold before I hang up. After twenty minutes or so they think, "well this nut won't hang up so somebody better answer".

+1
I've had that exact same vision!

 

[bpurcell]

When you buy a new cell phone, do you end up with two services, one of which you have to cancel??

This is not really a fair comparison. If the OP had transfered his current S2 subscription to the S3, then your question fits, and he wouldn't have needed to cancel his S2 service separately. What he did is more like someone that activates a phone with a different phone number and then have to separately cancel the service to the old phone.