Tivo Tech Support....but I still love my Tivo!

Ok, let me start by saying that I have been a Tivo customer since fall of 2003 and a very happy one at that. I LOVE my tivo and can not imagine life without it. The people I have talked to at customer service have never been anything but kind, helpful people....however, you have to actually get one on the phone first!

So my Tivo saga begins on Wed evening when we were getting ready to go to sleep and wanted to transfer a movie we had on the living room one onto the one in the bedroom so we could watch it. I went in to set it up and get it started but the tivo was "powering up". I didn't think too much at the time because if there is a service update it is not unusal for the tivo to then restart, much like a computer. So I sat and waited and waited and waited and then after the 3rd auto-restart cycle without ever actually getting to the tivo screen I knew I had a problem.

Now the Tivo in the bedroom is the oldest. It is almost 5yrs old and except for the occasional snafu, it has worked pretty well. I decided that it was not worth fighting with and I would just switch it with the Dual Tuner one that we have in the back room but do not use currently. This one has always given us trouble since we got it but we waited too long and it was out of warranty before we realized it was the unit and not our cable that was messing it up. So we wrote it off as a "Spare to deal with later". Well, later was now NOW.

So after dinner last night, I would say I started the process around 8pm or so. Here is my starting photo (all photos taken with cell phone):



Let me stop here and explain that while I can hook up a computer with no problems, and I am not afraid to try and hook new things up or play with new gadgets, when it comes to TV and TV cables and conections its like its a completely different language and all goes over my head. I was determined to do this and get it working!

So after I disconncted and then re-connected some wires from the old dead Tivo to the replacement Dual tuner Tivo, and I just basically copied it from one to the same spots on the other, I figured I was in and it would be all good:) As you can see, its now 9pm:


I thought to myself, I am on a roll. I got all the wires back in the right places, I should be good. Just got to update it and I will be all set to watch my shows!

It looks good, right?


Then comes a series of very promising clips...



And it is all ready to take the next step....


So I start to go through the steps of setting it up. Since the Tivo hadn't been used in such a long time I needed to get it to connect to our wireless network so it could get its self updated.

And then it would try to access the network (sorry for bad pic)


But this is where my trouble began...
Essentially this Tivo would not recognize my wireless network so it could do not get updated. Without it connecting I could not get anything on the Tivo from live TV. I could see the items that I had on it already (Stuff I had left on it before we stopped used it) but couldn't get to see TV through it like I should.

At this point I decided that instead of making myself crazy, I would just call Tech Support and get the nice experts to help me. Boy did I not know what I was getting myself into!!

So I called Tivo and I got the automated lady to tell me that "call volume was high and I would be waiting at least 20min." Ok, its night time right before a holiday, I can deal with being patient, my cell phone has speaker so I can just sit and listen.

And I did. I listend to the loop of an automated woman telling me how Donnie Osmond can't live without his tivo so he takes it every where, even to hotels and hopefully he will learn about Tivo desktop plus so he can take shows with him on his laptop or ipod. I also listened to her tell me how the KNOW how valuable our time is and so because of that they have made sure to put lots of easy to use help online and if I am near a computer I should check it out. So I did, the first time, and I found that it was NOT helpful and since I was still listening to her talk I was not convinced they really did value my time. The website was a waste of my time, and I just keep listening to those items plus how I can get stufffrom unbox on Amazon and all the other cool things Tivo does that I already know....for 40 MINUTES!! I even pulled out my Nintendo DS and played a little Tetris while I waited!

Finally, the phone rang and an agent picked up! She was very friendly and I explained that I had been on hold for 40 minutes so I assumed they were very busy tonight. I explained my situation and then gave her my information, including our phone number, to look up our account. She then said "let me put you on hold for a sec while I look up this information to see how to help you". I said, "no problem". Then I heard nothing and I sat there a minute listening to the nothingness. And I went to put my phone back on speakerphone and I realized SHE HUNG UP ON ME!!!!!! At first I thought maybe she would call back because I did give her my home number to look up the account so she should be able to look it up and call me back. But she didn't.

Boy did this tick me off. After 40 min of waiting, I was now hung up on and no closer to watching TV then I had been an hour before! So, being the glutten for punishment that I am, I called back. And proceeded to listen to that same stupid automatic lady talk for another 40 minutes before I got a nice guy named Marcus. And the first thing I told him was not to put me on hold because I had just been on hold 40 min, then hung up on and had to wait another 40 minutes before he answered my call!

Marcus was very nice trying to help me figure out what to do to get my tivo to connect to the wireless network. After trying a bunch of things (even going into the guided setup where it then seemed to get stuck because I couldn't go any further) and telling him about the trouble we had originally had with this particular tivo when we first got it, we basically came to the agreement that it seems like our "spare" Tivo has (and probably always has) had some sort of internal malfunction and that is the problem. By this time, it was around 11pm and I was ready to call it a night and deal with it all in the morning. I did make sure to ask the guy if Tivo was open on the 4th of July so that if there are problems when I got the new one I could call. And he assured me they were:)

So let's fast forward to today, July 4th.
I was hoping that Best Buy would be open. I got up around 9am and checked online to see what time Best Buy opened. 10am. So by 10am I was on my way out the door to Best Buy. Thankfully they had one in stock so I picked up a new Dual Tuner Tivo and a new wireless adapter. I wasn't worried about the price of the Tivo too much because it has a really good rebate (which I need to call them about to make sure I get it the right way b/c we had service already but that is for another day!) but I get annoyed the wireless adapter is so pricey, all because its "Tivo branded". Whatever...

So, I ran around and did a few other errands since I was out (had to get some printer ink and make a return to Home Depot and deposit at the bank)but as soon as I got home I got started on what turned out to be quite a process. Here is my new Tivo:

All the "stuff" laid out on the bed as I begin my project:

We go back to this mess (and yes it looks similiar but its a new photo!)

And after messing around and such again...it is all hooked up and ready to get started!

(not that it is now close to noon on July 4th. I have been at this for way too long!)
And so it begins...


Fingers crossed....



Wahoo! So far so good...





It's TIVO Time!!


Or so I thought!!

So now, I am pretty happy, things look like they are hooked up right and channels are updating. All the cable tests passed and it looks like its time to try and watch some TV to make sure things work.

At this point you can probably guess that my adventure is not yet over. As I started to browse through the channels I noticed that it was trying to find the signal sometimes and and some channels it said it lost the signal so this was not lookig good. Especially since this was part of the issue with the old spare one when we first got it and I was not looking for a repeat performance. If it was gonna have issues I was gonna take it back before they closed today!

So at this point, its time to call Tivo again! Now being that it is a holiday I did expect to have to wait a bit. I called and this time the woman told me it was only an at least 15min wait unlike last night that was a "at least 20 min wait". So being the patient person I am, I put my cell phone on speaker phone and waiting. I waited and listened, I played a little Tetris. About 28 minto into my wait, I hear it ring then somone one picks up, then NOTHING. I kept saying "Hello? Hello?" and then I heard the dreaded click. THEY HUNG UP ON ME AGAIN!!! Are you freaking kidding me?

Now I was livid. I could not believe this. I LOVE my Tivo but this was getting ridiculus! So again, I call back. This time, by mistake I hit a 1 instead of a 3 for tech support when inititally connected. Right away I got a live person-wahoo! But of course since all she did was activations she really couldn't help me although she did listen to my sad story of being on hold for over 2 hours within the last 24 hours and she was very apoligetic but ultimately could not help me, although she did suppossodely go and tell someone that the tech lines were hanging up on people. I tried to get her to connect me directly to a supervisor in tech support or something but she couldnt do it so she tells me she has had very few calls today and doesn't think the que is that long for tech support. I told her I didn't think that was true but I had just been on hold for 30min before being dis-connected but I would take my chances since that is all the options I had at this point.

So I waited on hold AGAIN. While I waited I even went over all the wiring and tried moving things around to see if I had done anything wrong and it all eneded up back the way I had it originally set and I waited. I tried again to look online for help and played some more Tetris (thank goodness for my Nintendo DS!) Finally after another 30 minutes I got Albert.

Albert was very nice. He listened to my sob story about being on hold and all my issues. I told him I did not want to be put on hold again because I didn't think I could handle it. He was very nice and patient and once he got information from me on my problems he asked me for a number he could call me back at if we did get disconnected and I appreciated that so much. He then wanted to put me on hold to go look up some information on how to help me and I told him it was ok as long as he promised he would call back if we got disconnected. And he did promise so I let him do it.

While I was on hold I started to go through the channels to see what ones were really missing.
After a few minutes on hold, he got back to me and we sorted some things out to come to the conclusion that the missing channels/the ones that would say lost signal were encrypted cable ones that if I don't have them go throuhg the box, I can't get. Because the Tivo is a dual tuner, one connection goes directly from the cable and the other through the box. This made sense and we came to the conclusion that I should just tell the tivo to skip those channels so I don't have the problem.

I was happy with that conclusion but I did tell him I still wanted to complain about the whole waiting time and getting hung up on. He explained they were moving call centers and obviously it wasn't going well :) I said I would just write them a letter about it later and told him to have a good holiday.

By this point it was after 2pm. I know half the day had gone by and I hadn't done a thing so I stepped away from the Tivo for a while and went back to the living room and tried to set up a few season passes with the online scheduling. I checked it a little later in the afternoon and things seemed to be working right. I messed something up at one point but I think it was a fluke thing and seemed to be ok when I tried again alter. I think its still trying to get all the up to date stuff so I will try to play around some more tomorrow but I do believe as I sleep tonight that my Tivo is now back in working order (Execept for me having to set up all my season passes and stuff again).

Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Hope you enjoyed my Tivo Tale for the day! And let me just say again, while I had a heck of a time today with the technical support wait times and getting hung up on, I still LOVE Tivo and think the service is superb! I would change it. I am going to chalk these last days events up to being so close to a holiday and probably short staffed but I would still 110% recomend them and their service to anyone I meet!

Hope you had a great day!
ta ta for now!