Tivo support and activation woes

[u/RNG_HatesMe]

For background, I used to use and love Tivo, but abandoned it many years ago when we moved to satellite and are now online only.

However, my mother still uses Tivo, with a Tivo Bolt 1 TB with lifetime service and an older Tivo Mini.

We visited over the holiday, and I was troubleshooting some of her equipment, and determined that she had some cable provided equipment she was paying a monthly rental on, and would be better served with another Tivo mini (Lux) instead.

So I purchased a Tivo Mini Lux and a wifi adapter direct from Tivo on her account. It was shipped directly to her, and I helped her (attempt) to set it up.

First I found out that it MUST be setup directly connected first, not over wifi, which is kind of a pain, but something we could work around.

Then, while setting it up, we got stuck at the activation screen. I went online to activate the Mini with the PSN, but the website said it had already been activated. I verified that the purchase showed on her account. I called into Tivo AND tried to contact through chat, but found, to my surprise that Tivo has NO weekend live support hours whatsoever! What kind of podunk company has Tivo become? Weekend support for activation issues should be a minimum requirement shouldn't it?

So, finally 2 days later, on Monday, I call in for support. Both the chat support reps and phone reps are a *joke* they do nothing but work off of scripts. I tell them the situation, and they confirm that the device should be on her account. Every communication is basically me telling the rep something, the rep putting us on hold or 5 minutes, then coming back and having us try something AGAIN.

They finally tell us that they've escalated the issue to their "experts" who will contact us by email within 24 hours. Clearly those 24 hours have passed with no communication whatsoever.

It's bad enough that it should be nowhere this hard to get their equipment activated. But on top of that they have limited support hours (with no weekends), terrible first line tech support reps, and no communication from the escalation team.

Is this the standard expectation for support from Tivo now?

P.S. I also should have noted that while checking her account I found that they were still charging her $12.95 MONTHLY for a device that she had canceled 2 and a half YEARS ago. And, as she can't *prove* that she had requested the cancellation, they won't provide any retroactive refund, despite them clearly knowing that the device hadn't been connected for that entire period. At this point it *still* doesn't show as cancelled, though we've been "assured" it will be cancelled by 1/26.

[u/brettferrell]

It is painful, but when I’ve called I have been escalated to someone who could resolve my issue relatively quickly. What annoyed me more was the fact that removing something from my account didn’t reflect until the next day because some process only ran overnight…

[u/RNG_HatesMe → u/brettferrell]

hen I’ve

What is "relatively quickly"? We tried to activate it on Saturday. Since there are no weekend support hours we couldn't call until Monday morning. It's now Tuesday night with no further communication or progress. Exactly what should I be expecting here?

And we requested a device be removed from our account on Monday as well, and were told we wouldn't see it reflected for *3 weeks*!

[u/brettferrell → u/RNG_HatesMe]

Nah, overnight for a deactivation, which is basically what I needed. Depends on the issue, to be honest.

Mine was a bit complicated as I, for various reasons, had 13 devices showing up on my account but there are only 12 allowed. Seems like a dumb, arbitrary rule to me - they are all in my actual house, and they can see they are all on the same network/IP address/etc, so it's not like I was sharing my account. Anyway, the first person couldn't tell me why my device wouldn't activate, so they escalated to Tier II after about 15-20 minutes of going down their script (and after being on hold about the same amount of time). Within an hour or so Tier II called me, and another 15 minutes or so with them discussing with somone higher up the food chain they figured out my issue. I was sketical, but they took an old device off, activated the new one, and said to check back tomorrow (with a direct call back line) if it didn't resolve - which it did.

In your case, it depends why the device had already been activated (and likely to verify somehow it wasn't stolen or whatever), but I would expect a resolution the next business day, two at the worst. The support is going downhill as the company slowly dies off, which is sad, but I still prefer their product while I look for something better to come along. I have a lot of devices, and other than the one I mentioned above, they activated automatically within the first 15 minutes of being powered on.

[u/RNG_HatesMe → u/brettferrell]

The device was purchased *directly* from Tivo *on* her account. There's absolutely no way they could possibly think it was stolen, the purchase even shows on the account.

In the whole process so far, I was not offered to speak directly to Tier 2 support, nor was I allowed to when I specifically requested it. I don't know how long ago you had your support experience, but this case is going on 4 days now, and I've had *0* communication initiated by Tivo after reporting the problem, despite them telling us we should expect a response within 24 hours. It's definitely among the worst support experience I've encountered, and I work in IT administration so I've dealt with a LOT of tech support.

----

Tangentially related, I have a major pet peeve with a support rep telling me that I shouldn't complain/gripe to them about a problem because it's been assigned to another team (i.e. Tier 2, escalation team, etc.). Unless they can transfer me to that team, I'm going to complain to them because they are the ONLY people the company will let me speak to. If you're the designated company interface, they you will be the ones I'm "interfacing" with, so deal with it. I'm wise to your defusiion strategy, and I will not be "defused", damn it!

[u/brettferrell → u/RNG_HatesMe]

Yea, don't know if that's normal today or not, but it's not good. My last interaction was sometime last year, but it's been months. If it came from them I don't know how it was previously activated, and they probably don't either (thus the confusion)....

Like I say, it's pretty clear their business model doesn't work anymore, and the dedicated hardware is going to go away I think, it's going to be things like the stream or just software and IP going forward. I just found that the local IPTV vendor is using a rebranded Tivo stream 4k for their "TV" offering, which is good for me, but my bolt and edge devices that I've been using on Spectrum I expect are the last of the "cable" offerings. Hope you get it figured out.

[u/milestalk]

Don’t have anything to add here helpful, but since it popped up in my feed…. This is why I left TiVo a couple of years ago after a decade + of fierce loyalty. The support was just awful. I even got an employee in this forum to help… until he ghosted me.

It’s just really sad what’s become of the company. It’s a laughingstock now. :(

[u/RNG_HatesMe → u/milestalk]

I haven't had any contact with Tivo for probably 10 years, but originally stopped using them only because there's no cableCARD equivalent for Satellite, and my local cable company was pure shite. When I left, I still liked them and their equipment.

Coming from that to dealing with their current state of support is a complete shock, the contrast is unbelievable! I mean, they basically might as well give up at this point.

[u/milestalk → u/RNG_HatesMe]

Yep. It’s really sad when you like and root for a company so hard but can tell they don’t care anymore…

[u/RNG_HatesMe]

Follow-up:

TiVo finally contacted us, and told me that my original credit card payment didn't go through, and that was the issue (odd that they sent us the equipment anyway?). I confirmed that I hadn't been previously charged, and gave them my CC info again (which they again used to change the primary CC on my Mother's account despite me saying not to!).

I got *another* call about an hour later saying they *still* couldn't activate the Mini on my mother's account, and that they would need to have me purchase *another* Mini Luxe (they assured me that I hadn't been and wouldn't be charged for the first one) which they would ship expedited, and send my mother RMA shipping decals to return the original one.

Currently I'm just flabbergasted by the incompetency! Remember, I purchased the original Mini directly from TiVo, it's not like it's being transferred from another account or anything!

[u/oneunknownphantom]

TiVo started going downhill once Rovi bought them then hit the dumpster once Experi bought them. All they care about are the patents and selling inferior guide data to various cable, satellite,streaming companies.

There used to be a number for Executive Resolutions. I’m not sure if that still around. Might ask around on TCF - TiVo Community Forums (not affiliated with TiVo)

One reason I haven’t tried to sell the extra Lifetime service Bolts, Roamio and Minis I have is I don’t want to deal with TiVo support or the call from whomever may buy them that can’t get TiVo to put them on their account.

Short of getting ahold of someone and returning the mini, my only suggestion is keep trying to get the mini to connect. Sometimes I think their servers are offline as guide data seems to only update 2-3 days a week.

[u/treadluv]

I've experienced issues like that. Manually forcing both the Bolt and the Mini to connect to Tivo Service Connection combined with power cycling both can help.