I had purchased a new 80 hour TiVo DVR a few weeks ago, but I couldn't get it to work properly in my home video system, so I was going to have to return it. But I was also pretty frustrated to find out 2 days after I purchased it that TiVo announced a new dual-tuner DVR with built-in ethernet for just about the same price.
So I called up TiVo and spoke to a very nice receptionist who told me that they would certainly be able to do something for me, and somebody would call me back. Somebody did get back to me, and they told me that there was nothing they could do for me, but I was welcome to purchase the new unit. Of course they don't ship to Canada so getting it was my problem as well. And this person also told me when asked that TiVo had nobody in charge of customer service, and refused to give me any other phone number.
Now I should explain the circumstances here. I currently live in Canada. TiVo does allow Canadian residents to subscribe, but they do not sell DVRs in Canada. So I bought my DVR at Fry's Electronics, about 3000 miles away from where I live. So I had to return the original DVR to Fry's, and get a new DVR, all at my cost. I figured that I had to explain this to someone with a little more clout, so I checked out the TiVo website to find that they have a Vice President of Consumer Marketing, Katie Ho, who is responsible for new customer acquisition and retention.
I guessed at Ms. Ho's email (lo and behold, TiVo doesn't use email or phone either), and sent her a note explaining the situation. Now for someone responsible for customer retention it seems odd that Ms. Ho couldn't be bothered to hit the Reply button on my email. After all, I am an unsatisfied paying customer, having just purchased a new DVR and paid for a full year of service. But apparently I wasn't worth Ms. Ho's time.
Fortunately though, a young lady named Alison did call me from their call center. She offered to handle the change from my current service to new DVR plus service. When I explained the problem of having to ship on box to California and the new box from the US, she also quickly arranged to credit me half the estimated cost of shipping, which I considered very fair. When she had issues with differing shipping and billing credit card addresses, she patiently waited and called back until it was fixed. And they she called me back the next day, a Saturday, to let me know that everything was done. She also apologized for the problems I had experienced, acknowledging that if TiVo actually sold the products in Canada I wouldn't be experiencing these problems.
I was also very fortunate that the Assistant Store Manager at Fry's in the City of Industry in California agreed to take my DVR back via Fedex. They do not do that but he was very gracious and agreed to do it. That's just one of the many reasons I always shop at Fry's.
I now have my TiVo back and am happily TiVoing again. But as a note to the folks at TiVo, when the person responsible for retaining customers couldn't even take the 30 seconds required to reply to my email, I'd certainly be thanking Alison, the young lady who did retain a customer.
Feel free to email if you want to know more. And I promise I will reply.
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