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Useless Customer Support

1092 Views 7 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  John McE
I've just got off the phone dealing with a "specialist" in the TIVO team by the name of Sharon.

I phoned customer support because, for the upteenth time, on turning on my TV, I was greeted with "This channel is not available" on almost all of my HD channels (although curiously this time, one HD channel (BBC HD - Ch. 187) was still working).

Sharon tried to tell me that this was because I could only record one HD channel at a time. I corrected her, but she was having none of it,. I told her that I was in touch with many other new TIVO customers and we could all record two channels at a time. She said that must have just happened. I told her no, it has been like that since the TIVO was launched. She didn't believe a word of it.

Instead I had to try out each and every HD channel, only to get the "unavailable" message. Sometime later she asked, with no hint of irony "are you getting a blank screen or is there a message". Grrr - don't you hate tech support people that don't know anything, and can only go through what their computer tells them to do? I thought the TIVO team was actually made up of people with experience with the TIVO. Obviously not.

Much later, I politely explained that if she had been told we could only record one channel at a time, then she should ask someone for verifiaction of this. She was having none of this, and once again tried to correct me. When I insisted she was wrong, she got decidedly shirty.

So I'm back to waiting for it to be "escalated" - although last time they phoned me back in the middle of a working day, telling me if I still had a problem, call them back - but leaving no number to call them back on.

Could someone let me have the e-mail address of the "boss" once again - I'm in just the write mood to write to him! I didn't mind paying £149 for a working product to be one of the first to get it, but as I know others who have been offered it for free, it seems that far from giving Series 1 TIVO owners a discount, we are merely being treated as mugs.
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A reboot sorts this out :) Just turn your box off at the back then back on, it has happened on mine a couple of times and weirdly it was just the SKY channels that were affected.

We/they are not sure of the causes of this but they are getting looked at.
Yes you are not alone with this one. It happens to my box 2-3 times a week and yes, as WooLLsterQ says, a reboot does sort it out - something we shouldn't have to do though :(
SURELY she suggested rebooting? I agree it is a pain, but TiVo isn;t immune from the same nonsense PC users have to put up with. Hopefully then next software drop will fix this (along with the damn PIN protect for every show I watch).
I've just got off the phone dealing with a "specialist" in the TIVO team by the name of Sharon.

I phoned customer support because, for the upteenth time, on turning on my TV, I was greeted with "This channel is not available" on almost all of my HD channels (although curiously this time, one HD channel (BBC HD - Ch. 187) was still working).

Sharon tried to tell me that this was because I could only record one HD channel at a time. I corrected her, but she was having none of it,. I told her that I was in touch with many other new TIVO customers and we could all record two channels at a time. She said that must have just happened. I told her no, it has been like that since the TIVO was launched. She didn't believe a word of it.

Instead I had to try out each and every HD channel, only to get the "unavailable" message. Sometime later she asked, with no hint of irony "are you getting a blank screen or is there a message". Grrr - don't you hate tech support people that don't know anything, and can only go through what their computer tells them to do? I thought the TIVO team was actually made up of people with experience with the TIVO. Obviously not.

Much later, I politely explained that if she had been told we could only record one channel at a time, then she should ask someone for verifiaction of this. She was having none of this, and once again tried to correct me. When I insisted she was wrong, she got decidedly shirty.

So I'm back to waiting for it to be "escalated" - although last time they phoned me back in the middle of a working day, telling me if I still had a problem, call them back - but leaving no number to call them back on.

Could someone let me have the e-mail address of the "boss" once again - I'm in just the write mood to write to him! I didn't mind paying £149 for a working product to be one of the first to get it, but as I know others who have been offered it for free, it seems that far from giving Series 1 TIVO owners a discount, we are merely being treated as mugs.
Sorry you had a bad experience with one of the team. As WooLLsterQ says, a reboot will fix this bug. The TiVo Team are aware of it and we hope to have it fixed in the the next code release.
Sorry you had a bad experience with one of the team. As WooLLsterQ says, a reboot will fix this bug. The TiVo Team are aware of it and we hope to have it fixed in the the next code release.
Any chance of letting the customer support team know this?
Any chance of letting the customer support team know this?
They should know.
Thanks for the advice re. rebooting. I did know this (and have had to do it several times), but realise now that I didn't say so in my OP.

But I'm suprised no-one has commented on the fact that their technician insisted we could only record one programme at a time!
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