# Open Letter to Tom Rogers, Tivo CEO and Tivo Management



## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

I have been a Tivo customer for over ten years. My original Series 2 Tivo was a great product at the time, but since then every unit I've owned (Series 3 HD, Premiere XL, Premiere XL4, Stream, Mini and now Roamio Pro) has had so many bugs, including the service outage by Tivo&#8217;s servers all night yesterday.

You can browse the support forums here at Tivo Community and on Tivo&#8217;s own website and see numerous problems users have been experiencing due to poor engineering and software bugs. When is Tivo management going to get its act together and get the engineers and support staff to resolve all of these problems everyone is having in a timely manner? Does the management board even know about these problems? Do you use Tivos the way most users do on a daily basis to know how many problems there are, or is this just another case of a company being run by a board of executives with business degrees and no depth of understanding of the product that they&#8217;re selling?

Among the long list of problems I've been experiencing: Padding time to Season Pass recordings creating a 2nd manual recording, numerous problems connecting to Wifi, frequent problems connecting to the Tivo outside my home network, Tivo Desktop for Mac not having been updated in several years, Roxio's Tivo Transfer not working at all with the Roamio Pro, the iOS Tivo App showing the wrong disk percentage, the inability to transfer some older recordings from another Tivo. The list goes on and on. When Tivo&#8217;s servers went down last night, there was no way for Tivo owners to know that the errors they were getting were a result of the servers being down. This information should have been made available on Tivo&#8217;s website. This shows an incredible lack of communication between Tivo and their customers.

These are issues that have been ongoing for months, and in some cases, years. The Level 1 phone support staff doesn't know how to solve these known issues. Incredibly, many aren&#8217;t even aware that these problems are known issues. They make you go through their canned troubleshooting guide over the phone, which is an incredible waste of everyone&#8217;s time. The Level 2 support staff seems to know about some of the problems, but the Level 1 staff makes it really difficult for Tivo owners to get through to them. It seems that the only decent support for Tivo owners is on their website forum and here at Tivo Community, but we only have the ability to make each other aware of known problems, not fix them.

This is completely unacceptable for an $1,100 product (Roamio Pro with Lifetime Service). I wish there was a better alternative for a standalone DVR besides the cable companies&#8217; DVRs, which have far fewer features. Currently, I&#8217;m only a Tivo customer out of a lack of better options.

Tivo management, please take the necessary steps to recognize the numerous problems Tivo users are having and find a way to get the engineering and support staff to fix them and communicate with customers in a timely and efficient way.


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## aristoBrat (Dec 30, 2002)

Do you follow TiVoMargrets posts on here? It'd be interesting to do a count of the number of problems she's been active with, both in querying users for more data (for the engineers), as well as communicating the contents of all of the Roamio updates that have gone out over the last few months (i.e. is the bug fixed in this particular update).

Regarding "Among the long list of problems I've been experiencing: Padding time to Season Pass recordings creating a 2nd manual recording":



TiVoMargret said:


> I believe it is fixed in the *next* update. I'm currently expecting that update in mid-December.
> 
> --Margret


I agree that there shouldn't have been as many bugs though.


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## southerndoc (Apr 5, 2003)

Early adopters always experience bugs. If you want a more solid product, always wait until they've been out for a while.


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## chrispitude (Apr 23, 2005)

geekmedic said:


> Early adopters always experience bugs. If you want a more solid product, always wait until they've been out for a while.


Sure, just ask those Premiere owners.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

nyctwc said:


> I have been a Tivo customer for over ten years.
> ..............................
> This is completely unacceptable for an $1,100 product (Roamio Pro with Lifetime Service). I wish there was a better alternative for a standalone DVR besides the cable companies DVRs, which have far fewer features. Currently, Im only a Tivo customer out of a lack of better options.
> ...........


LOL ... hope that rant made you feel better (which is about all it could accomplish). Your comments quoted above provide the reality that undermines any logic in your position.

Tivo provides the best value you can find ---- for ten years!

This reminds me of the WalMart employees whining about what lousy low paying jobs they have. Meanwhile every time a new WalMart opens, offering 300 jobs, more than 10,000 people apply for them.

Nobody forces you to use Tivo (or to work at WalMart). If you can do better somewhere else --- do it!

You presume to know better ways to run Tivo. Whether the changes you request would actually result in a better Tivo (from the viewpoints of tivo employees, stockholders and consumers) is highly questionable. They might just result in overpriced products, falling sales and extinction. You don't get to decide this, and aren't in a position to know the answer.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

geekmedic said:


> Early adopters always experience bugs. If you want a more solid product, always wait until they've been out for a while.


LOL, you haven't owned the same Tivos I have. Everyone is an early adopter/beta tester no matter how long you own the box. They are famous for breaking as much stuff as they fix with every software update.


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## HenryFarpolo (Dec 1, 2008)

I have to agree with the prior poster. My experience with TIVO over the years has been positive. Like others, I experiences the loss of some functionality the other night, but it was not the end of the world and certainly not enough to justify a full barreled rant against TIVO.

My guess is that the TIVO team will address the cause of the partial outage and will respond to some of the suggestions from posters who may have been affected, as they have in the past with other issues.


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

Been a TiVo user since 2001, I can't recall an outage like the recent one. So in 12 years they have one outage at the mothership and it creates mass-hysteria around here? Seems like a gross overreaction to me.


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## aristoBrat (Dec 30, 2002)

nyctwc said:


> When is Tivo management going to get its act together and get the engineers and support staff to resolve all of these problems everyone is having in a timely manner? Does the management board even know about these problems?


Regarding management being aware of these problems, TiVo's Vice President of Design & Engineering / Chief Design Officer (TiVoMargret) has been participating on this forum (which isn't affiliated with TiVo, Inc) for over three years now, and has been very active here since the Roamio launch.

From what I've seen, she's been involved with most of the major Roamio bugs reported here, in terms of being the liaison between forum users here and the engineers there, as well as communicating when the updates are slated to come out, and what's in them.

I can't think of another electronics product that I own where a VP of the company interacts "amongst the commoners" (esp. on a fan forum that isn't owned/moderated by their company), to the point of posting her direct email address and asking people with issues to contact her.

I'm not saying that there's no room for improvement with TiVo communication (or debugging of products before launch), and don't even get me started about how disconnected TiVo customer support is from the issues that she's involved with on the forum here, but on the same note, I don't think one can make the case that TiVo management is unaware of Roamio issues or not attempting to communicate about them.

I use this link to follow her posts here:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/search.php?do=finduser&u=198507


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

aristoBrat said:


> Regarding management being aware of these problems, TiVo's Vice President of Design & Engineering / Chief Design Officer (TiVoMargret) has been participating on this forum (which isn't affiliated with TiVo, Inc) for over three years now, and has been very active here since the Roamio launch.
> 
> From what I've seen, she's been involved with most of the major Roamio bugs reported here, in terms of being the liaison between forum users here and the engineers there, as well as communicating when the updates are slated to come out, and what's in them.
> 
> ...


Link doesn't work.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

BiloxiGeek said:


> Been a TiVo user since 2001, I can't recall an outage like the recent one. So in 12 years they have one outage at the mothership and it creates mass-hysteria around here? Seems like a gross overreaction to me.


What happened the other night? I did notice that the DIscovery bar was out. But it had zero effect on me watching my recorded content. I watched my shows like normal. Now if that gets affected I would have an issue, but some of the other features are secondary since I have many other devices that can accomplish the same task. It's just more convenient to have one device do most that. But an occassional glitch is not the end of the world. Since there is no device out there that doesn't have an issue at one time or another.


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

aaronwt said:


> What happened the other night? I did notice that the DIscovery bar was out. But it had zero effect on me watching my recorded content. I watched my shows like normal. Now if that gets affected I would have an issue, but some of the other features are secondary since I have many other devices that can accomplish the same task. It's just more convenient to have one device do most that. But an occassional glitch is not the end of the world. Since there is no device out there that doesn't have an issue at one time or another.


The mothership wasn't online for some reason. So that Discovery bar was out, the IOS app wasn't functioning, I couldn't get Netflix so the wife was a little unhappy since we couldn't continue our binge watching of Sons of Anarchy. But like you said, recorded content was fine, live TV was also fine and scheduled recordings were happening as expected.

It was a little frustrating that the IOS app needs the TiVo and the mothership to be online and available, but I have a remote so it wasn't like I don't have a perfectly reasonable work-around.


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## aristoBrat (Dec 30, 2002)

dlfl said:


> Link doesn't work.


Thanks, I updated it with this one. Hopefully this one works. 

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/search.php?do=finduser&u=198507


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

dlfl said:


> LOL ... hope that rant made you feel better (which is about all it could accomplish). Your comments quoted above provide the reality that undermines any logic in your position.
> 
> Tivo provides the best value you can find ---- for ten years!
> 
> ...


dlfl, with over 5,400 posts almost every day on this forum for the past three years, I'm suspecting that you have some association with Tivo. Are you a current or former employee?


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## aristoBrat (Dec 30, 2002)

nyctwc said:


> dlfl, with over 5,400 posts almost every day on this forum for the past three years, I'm suspecting that you have some association with Tivo. Are you a current or former employee?


This is a TiVo fan-site. I think you're going to find a ton of users here with way more posts than dlfl that have absolutely zero association with TiVo, other than being (or having been) a product owner.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

nyctwc said:


> dlfl, with over 5,400 posts almost every day on this forum for the past three years, I'm suspecting that you have some association with Tivo. Are you a current or former employee?


The best you can do in response is make a completely baseless, false accusation?

If you have been reading some of those 5400 posts, you would realize how ridiculous such a question is. I remember when Dlfl came to the forums - he was not happy at all with TiVo and his situation!


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## palover (Jan 16, 2013)

aaronwt said:


> What happened the other night? I did notice that the DIscovery bar was out. But it had zero effect on me watching my recorded content. I watched my shows like normal. Now if that gets affected I would have an issue, but some of the other features are secondary since I have many other devices that can accomplish the same task. It's just more convenient to have one device do most that. But an occassional glitch is not the end of the world. Since there is no device out there that doesn't have an issue at one time or another.


Server problems, apparently, but not affecting recording, playback, etc., just streaming and app functions. I was happy to know the problem was on their end and wasn't affecting basic operations.



aristoBrat said:


> I can't think of another electronics product that I own where a VP of the company interacts "amongst the commoners" (esp. on a fan forum that isn't owned/moderated by their company), to the point of posting her direct email address and asking people with issues to contact her.
> 
> I'm not saying that there's no room for improvement with TiVo communication (or debugging of products before launch), and don't even get me started about how disconnected TiVo customer support is from the issues that she's involved with on the forum here, but on the same note, I don't think one can make the case that TiVo management is unaware of Roamio issues or not attempting to communicate about them.


I would agree. Tivo ownership isn't exactly exploding these days, so they know that people aren't going to put up with a lot of problems and an unresponsive company. I think they're doing everything they can to fix issues but they don't have unlimited resources.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

nyctwc said:


> dlfl, with over 5,400 posts almost every day on this forum for the past three years, I'm suspecting that you have some association with Tivo. Are you a current or former employee?





aristoBrat said:


> This is a TiVo fan-site. I think you're going to find a ton of users here with way more posts than dlfl that have absolutely zero association with TiVo, other than being (or having been) a product owner.





CrispyCritter said:


> The best you can do in response is make a completely baseless, false accusation?
> 
> If you have been reading some of those 5400 posts, you would realize how ridiculous such a question is. I remember when Dlfl came to the forums - he was not happy at all with TiVo and his situation!


Er .... yeah. That's the ticket!

Just for the record I have absolutely no affiliation with TiVo and do not own any Tivo stock.

How's that old aphorism go? Something like .. If you can't win an argument on facts, resort to emotion. If that doesn't work attack the person.

I have had and still have complaints about Tivo. I just don't think giving them sanctimonious lectures to straighten up and fly right is of much value. The original post would more appropriately be delivered directly to Rogers or TivoMargret. I suspect it was yet another attempt to rouse the rabble on this forum and lead a torchlight procession to the Tivo castle to kill the monster.


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

dlfl said:


> I suspect it was yet another attempt to rouse the rabble on this forum and lead a torchlight procession to the Tivo castle to kill the monster.


Couldn't help but get a mental image of Elmer Fudd...

Kill the wabbit, Kill the wabbit!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

aaronwt said:


> What happened the other night? I did notice that the DIscovery bar was out. But it had zero effect on me watching my recorded content. I watched my shows like normal. Now if that gets affected I would have an issue, but some of the other features are secondary since I have many other devices that can accomplish the same task. It's just more convenient to have one device do most that. But an occassional glitch is not the end of the world. Since there is no device out there that doesn't have an issue at one time or another.


It exposed some weird restrictions. For example I tried to cancel a recording from my To Do List and it wouldn't let me because the server was down. WHy does it need to contact the server to cancel a recording? There was also no way to search so the only way to setup new recordings was to use the guide. It also blocked access to Netflix and Hulu.

Basically it demonstrated to a lot of people, including myself, how much the HDUI depends on that internet connection and we were caught off guard.


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

I find it amazing that after complaining about the numerous and obvious problems that exist with Tivo, Inc., that there are some that are directing their criticism at me.

If you were the owner or manager of a business, wouldn't you want to know about problems that existed in your business so that you could fix them? I certainly would. After all, that is the main purpose of having a "manager." Have you ever called Level 1 support only to have some rep spend tens of minutes on the phone with you troubleshooting, when you know the problem is on their end and you merely want to report it to make them aware of it so that they can fix it? That is extremely inefficient for everyone involved, and hiring those Level 1 employees comes at a great cost to Tivo, Inc. How hard could it be to create a database of known issues and have that entered into the troubleshooting guide that the Level 1 staff consults when they are diagnosing a problem with a customer so that they don&#8217;t waste their time troubleshooting known issues? Why is it so difficult to have a problem that you know is a bug reported to Level 2 support and have them share that information with everyone in the department? If I managed customer support, this would be my top priority and I'm certain it would result in a big cost savings overall to the company.

As for the outage yesterday, how difficult could it be to put a message on Tivo.com's website saying that there was an outage with Tivo's servers that would affect service. It would have taken someone 15 minutes to do this and could have saved Customer Support countless hours of support time answering phone calls from confused customers. As an alternative, they could have sent an email to customers saying that they were experiencing problems and were working quickly to resolve them. I'm sure they maintain a database of customers' email addresses.

As for the bugs, how difficult could it be to fix the disk percentage problem on the iOS Tivo App? Granted, I'm not a programmer, but I can't imagine it takes the three months I've been waiting for it to be fixed. Are they even aware that this problem exists? As I said, they don't even maintain a central database of known issues, so there's not way to even know if they know about this problem or not. When I first called up to report this issue, nobody seemed to know about it and the Level 1 staff were doing everything they could not to escalate the issue, which I suspect is on purpose. This is also a systemic problem with the way Customer Support works.

So as I'm being accused of "whining," I feel that I'm addressing serious concerns as a Tivo customer who wants to see the company do better and succeed. While I did not originally make suggestions on how it could be better, it is not my job to do so. As a customer, I feel that it is my obligation to make management aware that it is having problems that aren't being addressed.


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## jwbelcher (Nov 13, 2007)

Its just the approach you employed. I'd love to see these issues tracked in an open forum that allowed customers / field trial folks to open tickets and have a means track tickets. 

Honestly feel that an Open approach to the way Redhat, Apache, etc allow customers open tickets would help the community here and let Tivo prioritize based on feedback. 

IF the community organized to open such a ticket system itself (Bugzilla, etc) that wasn't full of rants and rubbish, I'd think it could have greater impact with Tivo.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

Is no one even going to bring up the fact that this "Open Letter" is posted to a fan site and will never be read by Tom Rogers or TiVo Management?


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## aristoBrat (Dec 30, 2002)

nyctwc said:


> If you were the owner or manager of a business, wouldn't you want to know about problems that existed in your business so that you could fix them? I certainly would.


I've had at least 10 interactions with TiVo customer service over the last few months (between setting up the transfer of Lifetime Service on all of the old boxes I sold + coordinating exchanges for a failed mini and a failed Roamio), and after each each time I received an email asking my opinion on the support that I received.

And IIRC, at least two of the phone calls gave me the option to do the survey while still on the phone by instructing me to ask the agent to "transfer me to the survey" at the end of the call.



> From: TiVo Customer Support Satisfaction Survey
> Subject: How'd we do? Take this quick survey on TiVo customer support.
> 
> Hey, Jason!
> ...


It's interesting to me how we can both be TiVo owners and have such different views.

You see TiVo management as being unaware of bugs and not being communicative, whereas I see that TiVo has a Vice President actively working on this forum (a fan site) with customers to squash bugs and communicate about when updates are rolling out (and what bugs are fixed in them).

You see it taking an Open Letter to open TiVo management's eyes regarding customer service interactions, whereas I'm being so frequently asked by TiVo to talk about what I thought of their customer service that it's borderline irritating.

IMO, there's a bunch of stuff TiVo could improve on to make owners experiences better. And I don't think you'll find a single person in this thread that disagrees with that statement. I think it's like what jwbelcher said... it's the approach you took that's generating the friction.


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

BiloxiGeek said:


> Been a TiVo user since 2001, I can't recall an outage like the recent one. So in 12 years they have one outage at the mothership and it creates mass-hysteria around here? Seems like a gross overreaction to me.


Couldn't agree more. Since 2000 here.


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

nyctwc said:


> I find it amazing that after complaining about the numerous and obvious problems that exist with Tivo, Inc., that there are some that are directing their criticism at me.
> 
> If you were the owner or manager of a business, wouldn't you want to know about problems that existed in your business so that you could fix them? I certainly would. After all, that is the main purpose of having a "manager." Have you ever called Level 1 support only to have some rep spend tens of minutes on the phone with you troubleshooting, when you know the problem is on their end and you merely want to report it to make them aware of it so that they can fix it? That is extremely inefficient for everyone involved, and hiring those Level 1 employees comes at a great cost to Tivo, Inc. How hard could it be to create a database of known issues and have that entered into the troubleshooting guide that the Level 1 staff consults when they are diagnosing a problem with a customer so that they dont waste their time troubleshooting known issues? Why is it so difficult to have a problem that you know is a bug reported to Level 2 support and have them share that information with everyone in the department? If I managed customer support, this would be my top priority and I'm certain it would result in a big cost savings overall to the company.
> 
> ...


Sorry, or not, to say this dude....you are definitely whining.


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## RusRus (Apr 8, 2013)

geekmedic said:


> Early adopters always experience bugs. If you want a more solid product, always wait until they've been out for a while.


Pioneers (Western) are the ones with the arrows in their backs.


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

RusRus said:


> Pioneers (Western) are the ones with the arrows in their backs.


And, not being from New York, they just cut off the shafts and get on with their lives...


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

jwbelcher said:


> Its just the approach you employed. I'd love to see these issues tracked in an open forum that allowed customers / field trial folks to open tickets and have a means track tickets.
> 
> Honestly feel that an Open approach to the way Redhat, Apache, etc allow customers open tickets would help the community here and let Tivo prioritize based on feedback.
> 
> IF the community organized to open such a ticket system itself (Bugzilla, etc) that wasn't full of rants and rubbish, I'd think it could have greater impact with Tivo.


I employed this approach because I felt that there was no other way to get this message to management. Does anybody know how to do this without it getting lost in a vacuum of several tiers of lower level employees and useless surveys?

I do appreciate that Margaret monitors and responds to issues here, which is partly why I chose this place to complain. It is atrocious that this is the main area people need to come to have their complaints seriously addressed. Even when she does address problems, the people working over the phone don't seem to know about many of them, which is another systemic problem in Tivo's communication structure.

Every large organization has serious problems when communication within that organization breaks down. It's up to management to facilitate the flow of communication between departments and employees, identify problems that exist and restructure and reorganize as necessary.

Does anybody think my suggestion for a central database for known issues that all customer support employees can consult is a good (if not obvious) one? As someone pointed out on a thread here, why isn't there a change log anywhere except here on Tivo Community that informs users when and what bugs have been fixed? This is standard practice for every piece of software and app I own. Why isn't there an indicator of server status on Tivo's website? I found a website posted by someone that actually does this. Why does Tivo rely on users to do this and come up with their own solutions (i.e. PyTivo and other software) and support instead of doing it themselves the way most companies would? The only conclusion I can logically arrive at is mismanagement, hence the open letter.


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## jwbelcher (Nov 13, 2007)

BiloxiGeek said:


> Been a TiVo user since 2001, I can't recall an outage like the recent one. So in 12 years they have one outage at the mothership and it creates mass-hysteria around here? Seems like a gross overreaction to me.





ltxi said:


> Couldn't agree more. Since 2000 here.


To be fair, TiVo hasn't used real-time services in products dating back to 2000 / 2001. Referencing dates like those are disingenuous. You would never be aware of a 18 hour hiccup back then.

Note, Tivo has a job postings right now for a Service Architect. Two key criteria; reliable and fault-tolerance. We have no idea their cloud service architecture, but after the experience in the past 3 months with C133, I would say they are neither reliable nor fault-tolerant.

Hopefully this posting will eventually lead to a more robust back-end, but my feeling is these bumps in the road are just the beginning. Having deployed JAX-WS on a large solution, its possible we may see scalability issues as more subscribers activate their brand-new Roamios.


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

jwbelcher said:


> To be fair, TiVo hasn't used real-time services in products dating back to 2000 / 2001. Referencing dates like those are disingenuous. You would never be aware of a 18 hour hiccup back then.


You have a good point there. But let's look at the nuts and bolts a little bit closer. When did TiVo start using the real-time services? When the premiere's hit the market? Just for laughs and chuckles I'm going to assume it was on the premiere's for the point I'd like to make, I don't think the TiVo-HD's had anything along those lines.

A quick look at wikipedia tells me that the premiere was released to the public on March 28th, 2010. I believe all the real-time services were on them at launch, but I could be wrong. So well over 1000 days of these real-time services being in use. This event is the only one of it's kind that I can recall.

I believe the outage lasted less than 24 hours but I wasn't keeping that close a watch on my Roamio. If it was, that's less than 1 day out of at least 1000. So I think my point is still quite valid when we look at the availability of the mothership being 99.9%. It's better than Ivory Soap!!


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## pgoelz (May 1, 2005)

rainwater said:


> Is no one even going to bring up the fact that this "Open Letter" is posted to a fan site and will never be read by Tom Rogers or TiVo Management?


If that is true (and it may well be) then it is a sign if a much deeper problem.... a company cut off from its users. I find this more and more these days, especially with Chinese manufacturers. I hope it is not true of a homegrown one like Tivo.

Paul


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## pgoelz (May 1, 2005)

nyctwc said:


> As for the outage yesterday, how difficult could it be to put a message on Tivo.com's website saying that there was an outage with Tivo's servers that would affect service. It would have taken someone 15 minutes to do this and could have saved Customer Support countless hours of support time answering phone calls from confused customers.


In fairness to Tivo, that is exactly what the text of the C133 error states, on your TV screen. There is a temporary problem with the TIVO SERVICE.

The problem is that until the other day, all calls to Tivo support to report C133 errors resulted in us users being told it was definitely NOT the Tivo service..... it was our LOCAL NETWORK. And that resulted in endless rounds of rebooting everything, only to find the problem was not resolved.

If the text of the C133 onscreen error message was not being constantly contradicted by Tivo Support, we would all have relaxed and simply waited for the temporary outage to be resolved.

Paul


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I cannot imagine too many CEOs that are going around reading through fan sites. 

We already have feedback that Tivo is implementing a status indication on their site. 

Tivo is a public company, and IS in competition with others, thus has to keep a fine line of what they consider confidential and that which should be made public. In reality, we have been able to peek behind the curtain much more frequently of late, hopefully that will continue. 

Roamio bug fixes have been extremely quick. Much faster than any other release I have witnessed. Unfortunate that they exist at all, and that some continue, but so far the release has been pretty great with getting these in the cue. I may finally become a "fast follower" on the Roamio instead of my normal 6-12 month wait to make sure the bugs are cleaned out.


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

pgoelz said:


> If that is true (and it may well be) then it is a sign if a much deeper problem.... a company cut off from its users. I find this more and more these days, especially with Chinese manufacturers. I hope it is not true of a homegrown one like Tivo.
> 
> Paul


I don't agree, the CEO's in most companies are not going to be out surfing fan sites to get feedback. They're going to task their customer service and technical support departments for feedback. While tivocommunity.com is a popular website for TiVo customers is not an official support channel and has never tried to be. Tom Rogers MIGHT see this "Open Letter", but probably only if TivoMargaret or someone like her takes the time to show him.

If the intent is to truly get this letter on his desk, a non-affiliated website is the wrong place to put it. Type it up, print it out, put in an envelope with a stamp and mail it. Or try to find his email address and send it that way. As others have said in this thread, we enjoy the participation from TiVo employees here on a fairly regular basis, but I would find it very surprising if that is actually part of their official duties. It's a bonus that I've never seen any other tech company do in a similar fashion.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

nyctwc said:


> Does anybody think my suggestion for a central database for known issues that all customer support employees can consult is a good (if not obvious) one?


I think TiVo has this in place already, or at least they have a system that could handle it. Trouble is getting the customer support staff to actually use it. Instead, they have you jump through hoops to make sure that whatever problem you're having is not on your end of things.



nyctwc said:


> As someone pointed out on a thread here, why isn't there a change log anywhere except here on Tivo Community that informs users when and what bugs have been fixed?


The change log we get here really isn't. TiVo doesn't always tell us *everything* that gets changed. They just give us highlights, and THAT didn't happen here before the Premiere came into being. Before that, all we got was a message on the Tivo that the TiVo Service was updated, and that only listed new features.



BiloxiGeek said:


> I believe the outage lasted less than 24 hours but I wasn't keeping that close a watch on my Roamio. If it was, that's less than 1 day out of at least 1000. So I think my point is still quite valid when we look at the availability of the mothership being 99.9%. It's better than Ivory Soap!!


IIRC, TiVo had an outage once when the Premieres where still fairly new.
That's when everyone noticed how dependent the HDUI is of the TiVo servers.



BiloxiGeek said:


> If the intent is to truly get this letter on his desk, a non-affiliated website is the wrong place to put it. Type it up, print it out, put in an envelope with a stamp and mail it. Or try to find his email address and send it that way.


Yep, this was what I was going to suggest. I believe it would be far more effective than posting it here.
Heck, I even think posting it to the "official" TiVo forum would be more effective than posting it here.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

Or TivoMargaret might, in the course of doing her job well, decide that calling Tom's attention to this post would be a waste of his time, since it's not a constructive criticism -- rather just a rant that assumes the worst about Tivo management execution, without really knowing what's going on inside Tivo. Just the fact you have many complaints about a product doesn't prove they can be blamed on poor management.


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## WO312 (Jan 24, 2003)

BiloxiGeek said:


> .....It's better than Ivory Soap!!


 Nothing's better than Ivory soap. It FLOATS.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

dlfl said:


> LOL ... hope that rant made you feel better (which is about all it could accomplish). Your comments quoted above provide the reality that undermines any logic in your position.
> 
> Tivo provides the best value you can find ---- for ten years!
> 
> ...


Wow you must be a Tivo Fan boy and think Tivo can do no wrong! Seriously after all the crap Tivo has put it's customers through this is your comment? This is Tivo's 5th generation Tivo by now one would think Tivo has learned from it's past mistakes. I for one would of dumped Tivo if I wasn't in a year contract with then. I been a Tivo user for years and have never felt so much pain with the past models as compared to the Roamino Line. Tivo has turned to Sh*t in my opinion. But to each its own I guess.


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## CloudAtlas (Oct 29, 2013)

dlfl said:


> Or TivoMargaret might, in the course of doing her job well, decide that *calling Tom's attention to this post would be a waste of his time*, since it's not a constructive criticism -- rather just a rant that assumes the worst about Tivo management execution, without really knowing what's going on inside Tivo. Just the fact you have many complaints about a product doesn't prove they can be blamed on poor management.


+1 WAY :up:

It's obvious with all that TiVo's accomplished in 2013 that management, and the company as a whole, is moving in the right direction.


 MAR 2013 TiVo Mini released
 AUG 2013 TiVo Roamio released
 AUG 2013 TiVo/Opera announce partnership HTML5-based Opera TV platform & Store 
 SEP 2013 TiVo announces TiVo network PVR 
 OCT2013 TiVo releases Out-of-home streaming
 OCT/NOV 2013 TiVo releases Fall update with support for older Series 4 Premieres!
 NOV 2013 TiVo releases new TiVo Slide Pro Remote
 2013 MSO partnerships with Virgin Media, Mediacom, Atlantic Broadband, Midcontinent and GCI.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

dlfl said:


> Or TivoMargaret might, in the course of doing her job well, decide that calling Tom's attention to this post would be a waste of his time, since it's not a constructive criticism -- rather just a rant that assumes the worst about Tivo management execution, without really knowing what's going on inside Tivo. Just the fact you have many complaints about a product doesn't prove they can be blamed on poor management.


Aren't you missing the bigger picture on all the rants? It is not enough anymore just to provide a good product. Customer's want feedback from the management or whoever is responsible for communications to the customers. How do we really know that Tivo management really isn't screwed up but no one will say anything because of fear of loosing their job? For the amount of money that customers pay for these devices, we would like to see them work 95% of the time. (This would be called system redundancy for just in case this crap happens) I really do not think that is asking too much.

Now before someone comments on how they have never had a problem that is great for you but not for the person it is not working for. All anybody is asking for is a somewhat bug free experience and to talk not BS but talk to your customer. As far as the open letter is concern it should be the responsibility for Tivo to realize that not everybody is going to go to the official forum if they are not receiving good support from the official forum. If memory serves me correctly and I could be wrong on this but isn't Tivocommunity.com bigger then the official forum?

Tivo has the ability to wipe out negative comments if they don't like them but the Mod here could as well. The mods don't which gives these forums more openness so people can rant and praise Tivo equally.


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## CloudAtlas (Oct 29, 2013)

mburnno said:


> I been a Tivo user for years and* have never felt so much pain with the past models as compared to the Roamino Line.*


TiVo Roamio line only went on sale in September so how much pain could you have felt?  From a DVR!?  Unfortunately early adopters do pay the price for having the latest and greatest. I know that all too well from my iPhone 5S and iPad Air - four iOS 7 patch releases since September.

Hopefully December's TiVo software update fixes your problems.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

Dan203 said:


> It exposed some weird restrictions. For example I tried to cancel a recording from my To Do List and it wouldn't let me because the server was down. WHy does it need to contact the server to cancel a recording? There was also no way to search so the only way to setup new recordings was to use the guide. It also blocked access to Netflix and Hulu.
> 
> Basically it demonstrated to a lot of people, including myself, how much the HDUI depends on that internet connection and we were caught off guard.


+1 :up:


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

Again, I posted here at Tivo Community out of desperation because there doesn't seem to be any way to directly contact executive management. After reading through some of the suggestions, I sent an email to Margret last night with my complaint. I have not heard back yet.

As stated earlier, it's atrocious that users have to rely on a 3rd party forum for decent support, a 3rd party website for server status and 3rd party software like PyTivo for reliable computer transfers. This is Tivo's job to provide these things for their customers.

To those who say I'm not offering any constructive criticism and that I'm just ranting, here's one extremely simple fix that would make me very happy - merely post on the support area of Tivo.com on one page a complete list of known problems that everyone can see. That way, all users would have to do is go to that area and see if their problem is on their end or is a known issue. This would save Tivo thousands of calls to customer support. It would make everyone including management aware of how buggy the units are, which would bring attention to the problems and would hopefully result in quicker fixes. It would also free users from having to scour through hundreds of posts on forums for information on problems. It would save Margret from having to post information here and on Twitter (where most people would not think to go for support updates), and it would save thousands of hours of everyone's time.


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## aristoBrat (Dec 30, 2002)

nyctwc said:


> To those who say I'm not offering any constructive criticism and that I'm just ranting, here's one extremely simple fix that would make me very happy - merely post on the support area of Tivo.com on one page a complete list of known problems that everyone can see.


Do you have any examples from companies that aren't open-source related of what that looks like?

I've spent the last few minutes googling around for a list like that for similar products (like AppleTV, Roku, Xbox, PlayStation, Western Digital LiveTV) and didn't come across anything.


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## CloudAtlas (Oct 29, 2013)

nyctwc said:


> I sent an email to Margret last night with my complaint. I have not heard back yet.


You sent an email last night and it's currently noontime in California and the Chief Design Officer and VP hasn't replied, *yet*?! Seriously? She is under no obligation to reply to you and I'm almost certain she won't. Email doesn't scale well. Try twitter.

*LadyBeryl *‏@LadyBeryl 4 Dec
@tivodesign *Outages happen but a TiVo status webpage would have avoided the many hours customers spent debugging.*

*TiVo Margret Schmidt ‏*@tivodesign 2:51 PM - 4 Dec 13
@LadyBeryl* Yes, I'm working on it.*


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## ADG (Aug 20, 2003)

nyctwc said:


> sent an email to Margret last night with my complaint. I have not heard back yet.


I'd send an email and complain!! Or maybe an open letter to Margret?


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## CloudAtlas (Oct 29, 2013)

> I'd send an email and complain!! Or maybe an open letter to Margret?


Or start a petition. Let's take back our government, I mean TiVo!!!!

https://petitions.tivo.whitehouse.gov/


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

CloudAtlas said:


> TiVo Roamio line only went on sale in September so how much pain could you have felt?  From a DVR!?  Unfortunately early adopters do pay the price for having the latest and greatest. I know that all too well from my iPhone 5S and iPad Air - four iOS 7 patch releases since September.
> 
> Hopefully December's TiVo software update fixes your problems.


You would be surprised when one of the staring features doesn't work and you get the run around from Tivo support of how it is your network causing the problem. Come to find out after jumping through all the hoops that it was on their end and not my network. Once again support was not willing to even entertain that the problem was with them but the customer is always wrong and not worth even remotely looking in to. The customer is *not always wrong* and sometimes we are correct.


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

aristoBrat said:


> Do you have any examples from companies that aren't open-source related of what that looks like?


https://support.google.com/mail/known-issues/14973?hl=en


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

mburnno said:


> Wow you must be a Tivo Fan boy and think Tivo can do no wrong! Seriously after all the crap Tivo has put it's customers through this is your comment? ...... .


Seriously you should have read my earlier posts in this thread. Shoot from the hip much?


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## TiVoMargret (Feb 3, 2008)

CloudAtlas said:


> You sent an email last night and it's currently noontime in California and the Chief Design Officer and VP hasn't replied, *yet*?! Seriously? She is under no obligation to reply to you and I'm almost certain she won't. Email doesn't scale well. Try twitter.


OMG, I love you all. (Even the grumpy ones. 

I responded to nyctwc this morning atchecking mail history11:57am Pacific.

I always welcome email. I do read it. I *try* to make the time to respond.

The more specific the email (dates/times/photos/TSNs) the easier it is to track down problems and get them resolved.

So if there is something you need me to hear, send it my way: [email protected]

I'll do my best to make things right.

--Margret


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## evanborkow (Mar 17, 2008)

TiVoMargret said:


> OMG, I love you all. (Even the grumpy ones.
> 
> I responded to nyctwc this morning atchecking mail history11:57am Pacific.
> 
> ...


Margret, you are a class act.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

TiVoMargret said:


> OMG, I love you all. (Even the grumpy ones.
> 
> I responded to nyctwc this morning atchecking mail history11:57am Pacific.
> 
> ...


:up: That's what I'm talkin' about!

I would guess you have no objection to your response being made public. Assuming that's correct, the ball is in nyctwc's court now.


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

TiVoMargret said:


> OMG, I love you all. (Even the grumpy ones.
> 
> I responded to nyctwc this morning at&#8230;checking mail history&#8230;11:57am Pacific.
> 
> ...


Thank you for taking the time to respond, Margret. I truly appreciate that there's someone in upper management at Tivo taking the time to respond to the problems Tivo customers are having.

While I deeply appreciate you addressing the specific problems customers are having, my main complaint was with the overall lack of communication internally and with customers and the overall structure of the customer support system, which I have described in my previous posts. I will respond to you in an email to discuss this further with you.

As I said earlier, I want to see Tivo succeed and I do this because the problems and solutions seem very obvious to me. I know it will be challenging to implement a change in structure, but with the initiative and the will, it will be beneficial to everyone involved.

Thank you for taking the time to address my concerns!


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

BiloxiGeek said:


> Been a TiVo user since 2001, I can't recall an outage like the recent one. So in 12 years they have one outage at the mothership and it creates mass-hysteria around here? Seems like a gross overreaction to me.


Very few were complaining about the actual outage.

We were complaining about the lack of status postings on their site and that the DVR has some functionality loss that it doesn't need to have during a TiVo server outage...


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

evanborkow said:


> Margret, you are a class act.


+1000

You go, girl!


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

evanborkow said:


> Margret, you are a class act.


No, well yes, but she's also a freakin' Saint!


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## aristoBrat (Dec 30, 2002)

nyctwc said:


> https://support.google.com/mail/known-issues/14973?hl=en


That's pretty cool.

Looking around on Google's other support pages (http://support.google.com), seems like they only put the "known issues" for their free services.

But it looks like if you own one of their _physical devices_ (like a Nexus or a Chromecast), ran across an issue, and wanted to see if it on their "known list", I don't see where they provide that information.


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## southerndoc (Apr 5, 2003)

slowbiscuit said:


> LOL, you haven't owned the same Tivos I have. Everyone is an early adopter/beta tester no matter how long you own the box. They are famous for breaking as much stuff as they fix with every software update.


I've had TiVo's (S2, HD, S3, Premiere, Premiere XL4, Roamio Pro) since 2000 and I've only had 2 to crash because of hardware failures. I haven't experienced many bugs with them. Maybe I'm just lucky.


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## TiVoMargret (Feb 3, 2008)

crxssi said:


> We were complaining about the lack of status postings on their site and that the DVR has some functionality loss that it doesn't need to have during a TiVo server outage...


I agree with both of these points, and I'm actively working to get them addressed.

--Margret


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## Sixto (Sep 16, 2005)

TiVoMargret said:


> I agree with both of these points, and I'm actively working to get them addressed.
> 
> --Margret


Thank you. Glad I just invested in a new setup of Roamio's. All is good.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

geekmedic said:


> I've had TiVo's (S2, HD, S3, Premiere, Premiere XL4, Roamio Pro) since 2000 and I've only had 2 to crash because of hardware failures. I haven't experienced many bugs with them. Maybe I'm just lucky.


I never said they were showstopper bugs, just that by all reports (and my own observances) it's common for them to break as much stuff as they fix with every release. I agree that most of them are just needless annoyances and head-shakers, kind of what the OP is complaining about.

The bottom line IMO is that without any retail competition Tivo has nobody to push them to do better, so they ignore or can't implement what many of us here would consider to be basic fixes and improvements.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

dlfl said:


> Seriously you should have read my earlier posts in this thread. Shoot from the hip much?


YES !!!! and I love doing it!!!!!

Listen at the end of the day all this is, is a device. Nothing more nothing less and I for one could care less if I didn't ever use Tivo again until they fix there stuff or at least they are up front about it so we know what to expect.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

slowbiscuit said:


> The bottom line IMO is that without any retail competition Tivo has nobody to push them to do better, so they ignore or can't implement what many of us here would consider to be basic fixes and improvements.


Direct retail competition is low, for sure. However, that is not where TiVo is looking for growth, and there is a ton of competition to get in with being the default DVR for a cableco. So, they certainly do have a push to improve from market forces, just not as directly from consumers.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

dlfl said:


> Seriously you should have read my earlier posts in this thread. Shoot from the hip much?





mburnno said:


> YES !!!! and I love doing it!!!!!
> ........


Well too bad --- usually results in wildly inaccurate shots (as in this case).


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## CloudAtlas (Oct 29, 2013)

mburnno said:


> YES !!!! and I love doing it!!!!!
> 
> Listen at the end of the day all this is, is a device. Nothing more nothing less and *I for one could care less if I didn't ever use Tivo again until they fix there stuff* or at least they are up front about it so we know what to expect.


If you really thought a TiVo was just a device and you could care less about it you wouldn't be posting on the TiVo forum, right? I mean when's the last time you posted on the the Proctor Silex Forum because your toaster didn't pop your toast up burning it?

Hopefully December's update fixes most of the annoying bugs. I've no doubt getting software ready for the Roamio launch combined with rolling out OOH streaming has taxed the software group. Bugs are going to happen - it's just a fact of developing software.


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## tvmaster2 (Sep 9, 2006)

geekmedic said:


> Early adopters always experience bugs. If you want a more solid product, always wait until they've been out for a while.


yeah, early versions of Cadillacs, Suburbans, Range Rovers always break down, crash and burn more often. It's the way of things.....


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

mburnno said:


> ........
> Listen at the end of the day all this is, is a device. Nothing more nothing less and I for one could care less if I didn't ever use Tivo again until they fix there stuff or at least they are up front about it so we know what to expect.





CloudAtlas said:


> If you really thought a TiVo was just a device and you could care less about it you wouldn't be posting on the TiVo forum, right? I mean when's the last time you posted on the the Proctor Silex Forum because your toaster didn't pop your toast up burning it?
> ...........


He, He. You've got to realize this forum provides a healthy(?) emotional (rather than logical) outlet for some posters.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

tvmaster2 said:


> yeah, early versions of Cadillacs, Suburbans, Range Rovers always break down, crash and burn more often. It's the way of things.....


Yes, they call that a recall and people get their stuff fixed or refunded. I don't see Tivo doing that.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

mburnno said:


> Yes, they call that a recall and people get their stuff fixed or refunded. I don't see Tivo doing that.


So many perfect companies out there and then there's that rascally Tivo. Go figure!


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I don't remember TiVo having any life threatening issues, despite the claims that are often produced on these pages.


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## nooneuknow (Feb 5, 2011)

dlfl said:


> He, He. You've got to realize this forum provides a healthy(?) emotional (rather than logical) outlet for some posters.


Really? Who might some examples be?    :up:


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

dlfl said:


> So many perfect companies out there and then there's that rascally Tivo. Go figure!


Well somebody has to be the problem child to give Microsoft a run for their money. Tivo might as well!


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

nyctwc said:


> Thank you for taking the time to respond, Margret. I truly appreciate that there's someone in upper management at Tivo taking the time to respond to the problems Tivo customers are having.
> 
> While I deeply appreciate you addressing the specific problems customers are having, my main complaint was with the overall lack of communication internally and with customers and the overall structure of the customer support system, which I have described in my previous posts. I will respond to you in an email to discuss this further with you.
> 
> ...


Considering all the public exposure this topic has had in this thread, can you fill us in on any specific changes being considered by TiVo as a result of your discussions with them?


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

dlfl said:


> Considering all the public exposure this topic has had in this thread, can you fill us in on any specific changes being considered by TiVo as a result of your discussions with them?


Hi dlfl. I'm not in a position to answer that question. That question should be addressed to Margret. I made some suggestions in this thread and in my email to her. It's up to management to decide if they are good ones or not.


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

While I sincerely appreciate Margret&#8217;s presence here, one has to respectfully question why a Vice President of Design & Engineering is addressing specific problems and complaints here at Tivo Community and posting updates on Twitter. This is extremely inefficient and it is indicative of structural problems within Tivo, Inc. Assuming that it is a separate department, this should be the job of Customer Support and it shouldn&#8217;t be happening at Tivo Community and Twitter, it should be happening at tivo.com. Margret should be coming here for design suggestions and ideas, not to report bugs back to her engineering team. The fact that she is doing this just shows that customers are not having their problems properly addressed through phone support and at tivo.com. The reason this is happening is because the proper structure isn&#8217;t in place at Customer Support and at tivo.com to allow this to happen, which is why I suggested a central organized database of Known Issues, as opposed to the plethora of support articles on tivo.com that are completely disorganized and impossible to navigate.

Once an existing structure is in place, it takes a tremendous amount of effort and resources to change it, which is why this problem has persisted for at least the ten years that I&#8217;ve been a customer. It takes someone at the top, presumably the CEO, to realize this and say, &#8220;this isn&#8217;t working, we need to change things.&#8221;


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

nyctwc said:


> While I sincerely appreciate Margrets presence here, one has to respectfully question why a Vice President of Design & Engineering is addressing specific problems and complaints here at Tivo Community and posting updates on Twitter. This is extremely inefficient and it is indicative of structural problems within Tivo, Inc. Assuming that it is a separate department, this should be the job of Customer Support and it shouldnt be happening at Tivo Community and Twitter, it should be happening at tivo.com. Margret should be coming here for design suggestions and ideas, not to report bugs back to her engineering team. The fact that she is doing this just shows that customers are not having their problems properly addressed through phone support and at tivo.com. The reason this is happening is because the proper structure isnt in place at Customer Support and at tivo.com to allow this to happen, 


I tend to agree with you but propose that perhaps it is like this because they are understaffed and Margret has taken this on by herself (on her own) to try and improve things for customers. It could be her hands are tied and can't hire anyone else and/or can't get other departments to cooperate or follow-through and is doing what she can, even though it means doing it herself. She might even be going around prevailing policy.

Such business politics are not uncommon... in fact, I know them all too well. So I can be critical of TiVo as a whole and yet still praise Margret for what she is trying to do (and actually getting done).


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

crxssi said:


> I tend to agree with you but propose that perhaps it is like this because they are understaffed and Margret has taken this on by herself (on her own) to try and improve things for customers. It could be her hands are tied and can't hire anyone else and/or can't get other departments to cooperate or follow-through and is doing what she can, even though it means doing it herself. She might even be going around prevailing policy.
> 
> Such business politics are not uncommon... in fact, I know them all too well. So I can be critical of TiVo as a whole and yet still praise Margret for what she is trying to do (and actually getting done).


I agree with everything you said and I praise Margret's efforts too, which is why I addressed this thread to the CEO. It is his responsibility to make this happen.

I have worked for enough large organizations in my lifetime to know that problems, lack of communication, politics and bureaucracy exist in every large organization, whether it's public or private, government or corporation. It's up to the person at the top to fix the problems and cut through the bureaucracy.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

nyctwc said:


> While I sincerely appreciate Margrets presence here, one has to respectfully question why a Vice President of Design & Engineering is addressing specific problems and complaints here at Tivo Community and posting updates on Twitter. This is extremely inefficient and it is indicative of structural problems within Tivo, Inc. Assuming that it is a separate department, this should be the job of Customer Support and it shouldnt be happening at Tivo Community and Twitter, it should be happening at tivo.com. Margret should be coming here for design suggestions and ideas, not to report bugs back to her engineering team. The fact that she is doing this just shows that customers are not having their problems properly addressed through phone support and at tivo.com. The reason this is happening is because the proper structure isnt in place at Customer Support and at tivo.com to allow this to happen, which is why I suggested a central organized database of Known Issues, as opposed to the plethora of support articles on tivo.com that are completely disorganized and impossible to navigate.
> 
> Once an existing structure is in place, it takes a tremendous amount of effort and resources to change it, which is why this problem has persisted for at least the ten years that Ive been a customer. It takes someone at the top, presumably the CEO, to realize this and say, this isnt working, we need to change things.


Then I still don't understand why you chose to post your letter here rather than mail it directly to Tom Rogers. Frankly I suspect you were (as I said earlier in more dramatic words) trying to whip up political pressure from Tivo forum readers. If your answer is something like "I doubted it would ever be read by him" then you have to acknowledge that Margret has aided your purpose by getting it some attention within TiVo at higher levels, despite your criticism of the appropriateness of her role on the forum

In your suggestions for "structural" changes in customer support, I believe you:

1. Underestimate the technical complexities of the range of problems that Tivo's can experience. Each of the ten or so major cable MSO's presents different issues and dealing with CableCARD and Tuning Adapters while being at the mercy of the cable operator's generally poor and unmotivated support is a major challenge.

2. Overestimate the resources that a relatively small company such as Tivo can afford to put into customer support -- and into engineering field work to address problems specific to a particular cable system thousands of miles from Tivo's location.

Poor customer support is not a problem specific to Tivo. For a product that is technically sophisticated it is a questionable that a CSR staff having the knowledge we would like them to have is practically achievable even if massive resources are available for salaries and training. If a company Tivo's size were to spend such resources, the price of Tivo's might have to double. And the intelligent database that would be smart enough to make up for CSR's lack of detailed technical knowledge would be either very costly to develop or impossible.

Just for the sake of discussion, who can provide examples of companies no larger than Tivo (in terms of employees and sales) -- and selling a consumer-priced product as technically complex as Tivo -- that has much better customer service?


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

dlfl said:


> Then I still don't understand why you chose to post your letter here rather than mail it directly to Tom Rogers. Frankly I suspect you were (as I said earlier in more dramatic words) trying to whip up political pressure from Tivo forum readers. If your answer is something like "I doubted it would ever be read by him" then you have to acknowledge that Margret has aided your purpose by getting it some attention within TiVo at higher levels, despite your criticism of the appropriateness of her role on the forum
> 
> In your suggestions for "structural" changes in customer support, I believe you:
> 
> ...


I agree that poor customer support is not specific to Tivo. One only has to call their local cable company to confirm that. Saying all companies offer poor customer support is not an excuse to offer poor support.

I made one suggestion that I said would be a huge timesaver for everyone, would result in a huge cost savings for Tivo in terms of wasted phone support time, and would take very few resources to put in place create an organized list of Known Issues (like the Gmail example I gave earlier) that was easily accessible on tivo.com for everyone to see. That way, someone wondering why they were getting two recordings every time they padded a season pass recording wouldn't have to call up phone support, post to a forum, read through a VP's Twitter feed, or search through hundreds of support articles on tivo.com to know that it was a known problem being worked on. They wouldn't have to fight with Level 1 phone support to make sure it got reported to Level 2 support to make sure that they knew about it.


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## pgoelz (May 1, 2005)

TiVoMargret said:


> I agree with both of these points, and I'm actively working to get them addressed.
> 
> --Margret


At the same time, could you please look into why..... for weeks..... the telephone support people were telling me adamantly that the C133 errors were DEFINITELY NOT on the Tivo side? This caused quite a bit of misunderstanding, frustration and anger directed at Tivo because it flew in the face of every indication I had at my disposal (speed tests, traceroutes and ping plots) that said there was NOTHING AT ALL wrong with my LAN, or the internet in general. And worse, it gave me the impression when I did call about it that Tivo was NOT looking into it.... just telling me to reboot everything and "see if that fixes it". Or worse, open a range of ports and permanently KEEP THEM OPEN. An open invitation to port scanners......

Paul


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

pgoelz said:


> At the same time, could you please look into why..... for weeks..... the telephone support people were telling me adamantly that the C133 errors were DEFINITELY NOT on the Tivo side? This caused quite a bit of misunderstanding, frustration and anger directed at Tivo because it flew in the face of every indication I had at my disposal (speed tests, traceroutes and ping plots) that said there was NOTHING AT ALL wrong with my LAN, or the internet in general. And worse, it gave me the impression when I did call about it that Tivo was NOT looking into it.... just telling me to reboot everything and "see if that fixes it". Or worse, open a range of ports and permanently KEEP THEM OPEN. An open invitation to port scanners......
> 
> Paul


This is exactly the kind of issue that users like me are having that wastes our time, and countless hours of Tivo support employees' time, costing the company money. All of this could have been solved if some sort of central organized list of known issues was collected, organized, constantly updated and shared by a support supervisor.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

nyctwc said:


> ....... Saying all companies offer poor customer support is not an excuse to offer poor support.
> ............


I didn't say that but I am awaiting examples of companies of the size of TiVo (or smaller) that sell a consumer-priced, highly technically complex product, that have much better CS.

The "excuses" may well be the factors I discussed in my previous post. A combination of technical complexities and limited CS resources (without overpricing the product).


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## CloudAtlas (Oct 29, 2013)

nyctwc said:


> *I addressed this thread to the CEO. It is his responsibility to make this happen.*
> 
> *I have worked for enough large organizations in my lifetime *to know that problems, lack of communication, politics and bureaucracy exist in every large organization, whether it's public or private, government or corporation.* It's up to the person at the top to fix the problems *and cut through the bureaucracy.


And when you worked for these large organizations can you give us some specifics of your communication with the CEO and his response to being told by you that's it's *his* responsibility to make it happen?

I ask because I work for a ~250,000+ organization and the coffee here it terrible. I wanted to make the CEO aware that it's his responsibility to fix this and make me happy. Also I have about twenty other things this company is doing wrong.

Should I just contact directly or should I take out an ad in the NY Times with an open letter addressed to him?


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Well, it is clear that TiVo did not have a CSR disaster plan for this unfortunate event. Things like that are easy to pick out when looking backwards, but we don't know if that lack of preparation was based upon imprudence or something else.


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## nyctwc (Apr 6, 2010)

This conversation is reminding me of an article I read the other day.

"Upsetting the status quo  or upending it  is always a radical proposition and is often an unpopular one, sometimes even among those who suffer under the entrenched system."

"Those who cant imagine change reveal the deficits of their imaginations, not the difficulty of change."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/opinion/a-lesson-before-dying.html

I've made my position known. I don't really wish to debate this anymore. I would rather spend time watching my Tivo then talking about it! Thank you to everyone who participated in this conversation.


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## BiloxiGeek (Nov 18, 2001)

CloudAtlas said:


> I ask because I work for a ~250,000+ organization and the coffee here it terrible. I wanted to make the CEO aware that it's his responsibility to fix this and make me happy. Also I have about twenty other things this company is doing wrong.
> 
> Should I just contact directly or should I take out an ad in the NY Times with an open letter addressed to him?


Sure, and you'll probably end up much more happy with your coffee, cause it'll be coffee you brew at home before heading for the unemployment office to collect your check.


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## Langree (Apr 29, 2004)

Still don't see how you think addressing a letter to the CEO on a non officially affiliated forum will be seen by him. Yes, Margret is here, but in no official capacity. If you expect Tom to respond, try holding your breath/

But hey, keep tilting at windmills and thinking you're being some unsung hero that is being misunderstood.

Let us know when you file the class action suit, those are fun too.


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

crxssi said:


> I tend to agree with you but propose that perhaps it is like this because they are understaffed and Margret has taken this on by herself (on her own) to try and improve things for customers. It could be her hands are tied and can't hire anyone else and/or can't get other departments to cooperate or follow-through and is doing what she can, even though it means doing it herself. She might even be going around prevailing policy.


Or maybe Margret just enjoys interacting with us, a delightfully enthusiastic subset of TiVo's customer base. (Don't laugh. It could happen.)


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

pgoelz said:


> At the same time, could you please look into why..... for weeks..... the telephone support people were telling me adamantly that the C133 errors were DEFINITELY NOT on the Tivo side? This caused quite a bit of misunderstanding, frustration and anger directed at Tivo because it flew in the face of every indication I had at my disposal (speed tests, traceroutes and ping plots) that said there was NOTHING AT ALL wrong with my LAN, or the internet in general. And worse, it gave me the impression when I did call about it that Tivo was NOT looking into it.... just telling me to reboot everything and "see if that fixes it". Or worse, open a range of ports and permanently KEEP THEM OPEN. An open invitation to port scanners......
> 
> Paul


My father gets C133 issues ALL THE TIME. Like almost every day. I do not. Clearly they're not ALWAYS a TiVo-side issue like the outage a few weeks ago.

But I have no idea what could cause my father's problem. His network seems fine.


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

L David Matheny said:


> Or maybe Margret just enjoys interacting with us, a delightfully enthusiastic subset of TiVo's customer base. (Don't laugh. It could happen.)


I won't laugh. It is entirely plausible. Many people, myself included, enjoy helping other people and interacting in productive ways. As a whole, the people on these forums are far more technological, sophisticated, and articulate than the "general public at large owning TiVo's".

We are actually a useful resource that can be tapped for solving problems, testing, getting suggestions for improvements, and fairly accurate feedback for how things are working. I (and many others from this forum) have volunteered to beta test more than once and it is a lot of work. Most of us can be HIGHLY critical, but most of us also want a better product, better service, and a better and stronger TiVo.


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

nyctwc said:


> This conversation is reminding me of an article I read the other day.
> 
> "Upsetting the status quo  or upending it  is always a radical proposition and is often an unpopular one, sometimes even among those who suffer under the entrenched system."
> 
> ...


At last!!


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## jntc (Dec 5, 2013)

I'm adding myself to the disgruntled list. I'm packing up all my newly purchased Tivo gear (roamio and 4 minis) and returning them today. I've had enough of this two week torture of errors, stuttering and skipping.

I'll tell you this I DESPISE comcast and their equipment, but I'm going back to it, as at least I was able to watch reliable television with their boxes.

TIVO, if you're reading, your history and your reputation made me a Tivo customer two weeks ago, but your newest gear has made me leave.


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## Sixto (Sep 16, 2005)

Wow. Sorry to hear that. I'm loving my 3 Roamio's and 4 Mini's on FiOS. I've had no issues. And even that one day with C133's everything worked fine other then that exclamation point in the upper left. I was as big a DirecTV fan as there was but Roamio on FiOS is awesome. Just awesome.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

jntc- you may be gone already, but did you ask for help on this issue here? You could have a bad box (drive is my guess). It happens.


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## jntc (Dec 5, 2013)

jrtroo said:


> jntc- you may be gone already, but did you ask for help on this issue here? You could have a bad box (drive is my guess). It happens.


Yes, I have posted on this, called tivo, and even replaced the boxes, twice now. I've tried moca, ethernet, wireless. I've put in a new splitter, new cable, new HDMI cables.

My signals are fantastic 97-100, with 30SNR on each tuner/channel

My moca signals are fantastic ~270PHY for both Rx and Tx and -6 to -14 on Power Tx and ~.5 on Rx

No errors in packets

The first mini and roamio I had presented a very dark and red picture. Replaced, roamio was good. The second Mini would drift out of audio sync and skip frames/stutter. The third Mini (as well as two additional ones) will skip frames, drop audio, and stutter.

This combined with the c133, v53 and v58 and blue circles spinning and spinning have driven me absolute mad.

I'm sorry if this is not the norm, but this has been my experience, and my family is mad.

Seriously, I've done everything I can to make this work, I have not seen any other options that will do what I wanted to achieve with Tivo. There is no competition and like I said, Tivo's history says this shouldn't be the case.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

mburnno said:


> Yes, they call that a recall and people get their stuff fixed or refunded. I don't see Tivo doing that.


No, only the ones that get enough attention and generally involve safety become recalls and get fixed. Many are posted as TSB's and it's the customer gets to pay for them if beyond your warranty period. Some don't even rate a TSB but are common failures on particular models. A couple on my current care include the radio/heating/cooling LCD display failure and the headliner falling down.

Scott


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## jntc (Dec 5, 2013)

Sixto said:


> Wow. Sorry to hear that. I'm loving my 3 Roamio's and 4 Mini's on FiOS. I've had no issues. And even that one day with C133's everything worked fine other then that exclamation point in the upper left. I was as big a DirecTV fan as there was but Roamio on FiOS is awesome. Just awesome.


You have no issues with your mini's skipping out/stuttering/audio dropout type problems? I have had four, and every one has experienced this. (mainly during live TV watching)

Can you take a look at your network status from one of your minis and see what your values are for PHY TX and RX and Power for TX and RX?

Luckily the weather is crappy, and I don't feel like dragging all these back to BestBuy tonight.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

jntc said:


> Yes, I have posted on this, called tivo, and even replaced the boxes, twice now. I've tried moca, ethernet, wireless. I've put in a new splitter, new cable, new HDMI cables.
> 
> My signals are fantastic 97-100, with 30SNR on each tuner/channel
> 
> ...


If the SNR 30dB is accurate that number is not good as you are on the verge of losing audio and video on the channel you took that number from.
If you are experiencing audio drop outs and tiling video or stuttering video then you need Comcast to come out and look for the problem that is causing this.

It could be bad F connectors, bad coax wiring, splitters, or improper amps in the home. Junky amps will add noise to the signal. 
If the problem is outside then it is bad F connectors, bad drop, bad tap, bad couplers, bad line splitters, bad amps, etc. 
If the problem is moisture or water getting in the hardware outside the winter will reveal this problem when the water freezes, especially at night.

Before you give up and send the TiVo hardware back you should have this looked at first. You should have a SNR of at least 35dB or above for every channel. You can have lower power levels but not lower SNR levels. If you have little noise in your cable signal the SNR will stay stable even if you reduce the power level by adding in a large number of splits. Right now you are sitting on the edge of the digital cliff where the audio and video will quit working altogether.


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## jntc (Dec 5, 2013)

Jed1 said:


> If the SNR 30dB is accurate that number is not good as you are on the verge of losing audio and video on the channel you took that number from.
> If you are experiencing audio drop outs and tiling video or stuttering video then you need Comcast to come out and look for the problem that is causing this.
> 
> It could be bad F connectors, bad coax wiring, splitters, or improper amps in the home. Junky amps will add noise to the signal.
> ...


My mistake on that the SNR's are hovering around 39 not 30


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

jntc said:


> My mistake on that the SNR's are hovering around 39 not 30


That's good. I read some of your posts and you indicate that you have no issue with the Roamio just with the minis. I can not help you with this as I do not have any minis just two Premiere 4's that are connected to my network by a wired connection.
I did read somewhere that noise can effect devices using a Moca connection and cause the issues you are having. 
Can you try using a wired connection to at least one of the minis even if you have to set it up in the same room as the Roamio?
TiVo told me when I bought my Premiere 4's this summer that they prefer a wired connection as this is the best set up.


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## jntc (Dec 5, 2013)

Jed1 said:


> That's good. I read some of your posts and you indicate that you have no issue with the Roamio just with the minis. I can not help you with this as I do not have any minis just two Premiere 4's that are connected to my network by a wired connection.
> I did read somewhere that noise can effect devices using a Moca connection and cause the issues you are having.
> Can you try using a wired connection to at least one of the minis even if you have to set it up in the same room as the Roamio?
> TiVo told me when I bought my Premiere 4's this summer that they prefer a wired connection as this is the best set up.


This is true, no problems on the Roamio at all. I think I could get ethernet to each one if need be, but was told that moca should be more than enough to stream to the mini's.

However, I'll give this a shot and see what we get. I didn't want to use eth as not to saturate my normal network with streaming to the mini's.

As to not hi-jack this thread - I have another thread open in the Mini's forum here: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=512363 - anyone offering advice, please go there.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

jntc said:


> This is true, no problems on the Roamio at all. I think I could get ethernet to each one if need be, but was told that moca should be more than enough to stream to the mini's.
> 
> However, I'll give this a shot and see what we get. I didn't want to use eth as not to saturate my normal network with streaming to the mini's.
> 
> As to not hi-jack this thread - I have another thread open in the Mini's forum here: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=512363 - anyone offering advice, please go there.


I understand that MoCA operates in the 500MHz to 1650MHz range so it is possible that something is interfering with the MoCA signal in your home. Eliminating the MoCA setup and trying one mini with wired Ethernet is the simplest way to go about this. If the issues go away then you can determine that the problem lies with the infrastructure in your home.

I found this link about TiVo and MoCA during a search. They makes things look real easy but they have no information on how to troubleshoot it when things go wrong.
http://moca4installers.com/TiVo_MoCA_networks.php


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## Sixto (Sep 16, 2005)

jntc said:


> You have no issues with your mini's skipping out/stuttering/audio dropout type problems? I have had four, and every one has experienced this. (mainly during live TV watching)
> 
> Can you take a look at your network status from one of your minis and see what your values are for PHY TX and RX and Power for TX and RX?
> 
> Luckily the weather is crappy, and I don't feel like dragging all these back to BestBuy tonight.


Yep, no issues. I'm all Ethernet at the moment with all 7 boxes, since I tested with Ethernet and got 180-200Mbps on transfers, thus decided to stay on Ethernet. The only issue I've had is one day I had an issue with Roamio to Roamio streaming and a Can't Play Now message but no issue since.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

jntc said:


> You have no issues with your mini's skipping out/stuttering/audio dropout type problems? I have had four, and every one has experienced this. (mainly during live TV watching)
> 
> Can you take a look at your network status from one of your minis and see what your values are for PHY TX and RX and Power for TX and RX?
> 
> Luckily the weather is crappy, and I don't feel like dragging all these back to BestBuy tonight.


I just did and they all above 200, they go from 205 to 270, I have 1 mini and 2 Roamio +s and one 4 tuner TP. I bridge one Roamio + to the network.


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## jntc (Dec 5, 2013)

Sixto said:


> Yep, no issues. I'm all Ethernet at the moment with all 7 boxes, since I tested with Ethernet and got 180-200Mbps on transfers, thus decided to stay on Ethernet. The only issue I've had is one day I had an issue with Roamio to Roamio streaming and a Can't Play Now message but no issue since.


The mini only has 10/100mbps ethernet, and my moca is claiming 280mbps. I figured that moca would be the better choice here.

I'm going to try ethernet today to rule out a moca issue though.

I also realized the the leviton 5way splitter I have (the only splitter in the mix - in from outside to 5way with homeruns to each tv) is only rated at 1000mhz, so I ordered a 2400mhz to replace that as well.

It's good news to hear that this is not a common problem.

I'm hoping to win this!


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## crxssi (Apr 5, 2010)

jntc said:


> I also realized the the leviton 5way splitter I have (the only splitter in the mix - in from outside to 5way with homeruns to each tv) is only rated at 1000mhz, so I ordered a 2400mhz to replace that as well.


Yep, I was reading through the posts and about to tell you to check your splitters- that you probably have an old one that is mucking your MOCA....


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

nyctwc said:


> I agree that poor customer support is not specific to Tivo. One only has to call their local cable company to confirm that. Saying all companies offer poor customer support is not an excuse to offer poor support.
> 
> I made one suggestion that I said would be a huge timesaver for everyone, would result in a huge cost savings for Tivo in terms of wasted phone support time, and would take very few resources to put in place create an organized list of Known Issues (like the Gmail example I gave earlier) that was easily accessible on tivo.com for everyone to see. That way, someone wondering why they were getting two recordings every time they padded a season pass recording wouldn't have to call up phone support, post to a forum, read through a VP's Twitter feed, or search through hundreds of support articles on tivo.com to know that it was a known problem being worked on. They wouldn't have to fight with Level 1 phone support to make sure it got reported to Level 2 support to make sure that they knew about it.


But I don't get two recordings from a padded season pass. I pad very few SPs, but the ones I do pad do not create two recordings from it. So I don't see how this is a known problem when it doesn't even occur on the two Roamios I own.


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## Sixto (Sep 16, 2005)

jntc said:


> The mini only has 10/100mbps ethernet, and my moca is claiming 280mbps. I figured that moca would be the better choice here.
> 
> I'm going to try ethernet today to rule out a moca issue though.
> 
> ...


Yeah, for FiOS I just switched to their Verizon branded 5-1675Mhz splitters. PDI-2WWB-2.0 and PDI-4WWB-2.0 MoCA 2.0 splitters. We don't need MoCA 2.0 for Roamio but figured that I'd go with the standard infrastructure.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

jntc said:


> The mini only has 10/100mbps ethernet, and my moca is claiming 280mbps. I figured that moca would be the better choice here.
> 
> I'm going to try ethernet today to rule out a moca issue though.
> 
> ...


My main FiOS intalled spitter is 1GHz 8-way splitter and the ones I've installed were also 1Ghz. When I was using MoCA they all worked fine with FiOS, my two Minis, and Roamio Pro..


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## dcpmark (Feb 8, 2006)

jntc said:


> It's good news to hear that this is not a common problem.


Yeah, I've had a Roamio Pro + 3 Minis on FiOS using MoCA for over a month now, and I've had none of problems you have had. My setup is different than yours in that I am using an Actontech MoCA adaptor to generate the MoCA network rather than the Roamio itself.

Hope you get it straightened out......I've been a TiVO user for over 13 years, and this is the TiVO setup and performance I been waiting for. I could not be happier. Well, except for not having folders and the ability to watch Amazon movie rentals on the Minis.....


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## cherry ghost (Sep 13, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> But I don't get two recordings from a padded season pass. I pad very few SPs, but the ones I do pad do not create two recordings from it. So I don't see how this is a known problem when it doesn't even occur on the two Roamios I own.


It's not padded SPs that cause the problem. It's changing/adding padding to individual recordings that are already set to record because you have an SP for them.


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