# Split Lifetime Sub up into 4 payments



## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

I wish I could break up the lifetime payments into 4 $100 payments...


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## Fred C Dobbs (Dec 5, 2013)

That would've been a nice option, but I'm sure Tivo prefers it all upfront.

FCD


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

This is what credit cards are for.


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## Time_Lord (Jun 4, 2012)

steve614 said:


> This is what credit cards are for.


...and that attitude is what gets people in severe debt. if put $400 on your card with a 19% interest rate you'll pay $104 per month to pay it off in 4 months.

That figure however is assuming that you have absolutely nothing else on the credit card (remember credit card companies charge interest on the total balance). Oh and stay far far away from the minimum payments.

See this nice nifty calculator: http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/credit-cards/credit-card-payoff-calculator.aspx

Personally I'd simply put $100 aside each month for the next 4 months and then buy it.


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## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

Time_Lord said:


> ...and that attitude is what gets people in severe debt. if put $400 on your card with a 19% interest rate you'll pay $104 per month to pay it off in 4 months.
> 
> That figure however is assuming that you have absolutely nothing else on the credit card (remember credit card companies charge interest on the total balance). Oh and stay far far away from the minimum payments.
> 
> ...


Thats what I'm going to do...or I'll pay it with my tax return


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## rassi (Jul 18, 2003)

Time_Lord said:


> ...and that attitude is what gets people in severe debt. if put $400 on your card with a 19% interest rate you'll pay $104 per month to pay it off in 4 months.


Who still had a CC with 19% interest? Move those to a better rate card. Cards below 10% are easily found, and there are ones closer to 5% to be had....if you have good credit.


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

rassi said:


> Who still had a CC with 19% interest? Move those to a better rate card. Cards below 10% are easily found, and there are ones closer to 5% to be had....if you have good credit.


Only those with bad credit on no sense. Mine is 6%. Not that it matters. I carry no debt.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

ltxi said:


> Only those with bad credit on no sense. Mine is 6%. Not that it matters. I carry no debt.


Nonsense. I think my credit cards are in that range and my credit is excellent. I get quite good cash back from my cards, and in the past 35 years have only paid interest twice (mail problems) since I pay them off. Yes, I could undoubtedly get new cards with lower rates now, but why suffer the hit to my credit rating?


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## JSY (Nov 6, 2002)

CrispyCritter said:


> Nonsense. I think my credit cards are in that range and my credit is excellent. I get quite good cash back from my cards, and in the past 35 years have only paid interest twice (mail problems) since I pay them off. Yes, I could undoubtedly get new cards with lower rates now, but why suffer the hit to my credit rating?


Yeah. Where are people finding these 6% rates? I only see those or lower (0%) for introductory APRs but the regular APR is above 10% and my credit is almost at the highest it can be. Are you all referring to introductory rates because I haven't seen any regular variable rates below 10% in a long long time. That being said, I agree - I don't like to reapply for CCs as I don't like the hard inquiry into my credit report (especially when I'm shopping for a new home!).

Oh, back to the topic - I doubt if we'll ever see lifetime divided into payments. It seems to sort of work against the idea of them getting X amount up front in return to giving you lifetime. I don't think there is much incentive or gain to them to do that. They don't have your money up front so they lose value on that.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

CrispyCritter said:


> Yes, I could undoubtedly get new cards with lower rates now, but why suffer the hit to my credit rating?


Your credit rating won't suffer. If you have paid as agreed for years and wind up with more $ credit lines, your credit score will go up. Someone that has a large amount of credit that is unused is deemed a good credit risk.

Applying for a lot of credit cards all at once will lower your score initially so just get one card every few months.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

spaldingclan said:


> I wish I could break up the lifetime payments into 4 $100 payments...


You should watch Suze Orman. Particularly the can I afford it segment.


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## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

how do I delete this thread?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

You can't


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## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

great. this thread has been killed by others


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I think the bottom line is they really have no incentive to offer multiple payments for lifetime. With MSD you are already getting $100 off, and in the long term it is alot less than monthly. SO those are the benefits of Lifetime. By offering a four month payment plan, they would be losing even more money off of the TiVo service.

For me, even I I were to put it on a credit card to spread it out over four months, that would still be a viable option. With a low interest credit card. Spreading it out over four months would not add very much to the $400 cost. And you would still be saving alot of money in the long run over having monthly service.


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

Welcome to the Internet, it is rare the thread that stays completely on topic.


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## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

why can't i delete a thread i started?


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Because then you would be deleting posts by other people. Only someone with administrative rights can delete posts by someone else.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

spaldingclan said:


> great. this thread has been killed by others


Depends on how you look at it. You started a thread that basically was asking TiVo to finance lifetime service. Others stepped in and expand that to include financing with credit cards. Which is more than viable, in fact the last card I got offered 1 year at 0% for new purchases so getting a new card like that actually offers a no cost way to spread lifetime over 1 year. But as others have said it is all about managing your own money via spending control, I have purchased pretty much anything and everything I could with credit cards my whole life (I am 56) and have paid exactly 0$ in interest charges and have been paid well over $1000 to use the credit cards.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

spaldingclan said:


> great. this thread has been killed by others


LOL. What did you expect? Welcome to the internet. 
It's not like TiVo actually monitors this forum anyways.

You have to think to yourself: What would TiVo have to gain by breaking up the lifetime fee into multiple payments?
I don't see the upside for them. They certainly wouldn't do it just for our benefit. They'd want to get something out of it, too.
Maybe if you can explain exactly how this would help *their* bottom line...


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

It would be nice if there was a sort of "rent to own" option, seeing as how in May of 2014 I'll have paid nearly $480 on my first S2 DT via the $9.95 per month.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

steve614 said:


> You have to think to yourself: What would TiVo have to gain by breaking up the lifetime fee into multiple payments?
> I don't see the upside for them. They certainly wouldn't do it just for our benefit. They'd want to get something out of it, too.
> Maybe if you can explain exactly how this would help *their* bottom line...


They could have more potential customers if they spread the payments out. It weird how people think sometimes when it comes to financial stuff. If a user saw a price of $400 most people would say no way and stay away. If you allow the user to be able to think they could afford it by locking them in to $100 payments, then there is a chance more people may actually buy in to the lifetime plan. Of course as already mention you could just save the money but that would take more discipline which some of us do not have.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

unitron said:


> It would be nice if there was a sort of "rent to own" option, seeing as how in May of 2014 I'll have paid nearly $480 on my first S2 DT via the $9.95 per month.


You are out all of $80, not a huge sum of money. But if your TiVo had broken, the lifetime fee becomes worthless. Currently you are out $80 but still have a working TiVo. And if you follow the cheap deals thread on the Roamio, you can get a new TiVo Roamio basic for $150 and possibly a $50 Best Buy gift card and not have any buyers remorse on a Lifetimed TiVo.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

mburnno said:


> They could have more potential customers if they spread the payments out.


Could those customers afford to pay for a new TiVo if their lifetimed TiVo becomes irrepairly damaged out of warranty? That is the risk you take with lifetiming a single TiVo.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

chicagobrownblue said:


> You are out all of $80, not a huge sum of money. But if your TiVo had broken, the lifetime fee becomes worthless. Currently you are out $80 but still have a working TiVo. And if you follow the cheap deals thread on the Roamio, you can get a new TiVo Roamio basic for $150 and possibly a $50 Best Buy gift card and not have any buyers remorse on a Lifetimed TiVo.


If it broke, I would have moved the crypto chip, and the lifetime sub, to another 649 motherboard.

Oh, wait, I actually already did.

Except for the lifetime part, because it wasn't lifetimed.

(but it did have about 2TB of my mom's recordings tied to that crypto chip)

But when I first got it, I didn't have the money to spare to lifetime it, and didn't know I'd be getting so much mileage out of it or would be upgrading it to 2 1TB drives or any of that.

But I don't think I'll be running it another 4 years, so buying lifetime now, even MSD'ed, wouldn't be a prudent investment.

But if there'd been an option to pay for lifetime gradually, I'd probably have gone for that.


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

JSY said:


> Yeah. *Where are people finding these 6% rates?* I only see those or lower (0%) for introductory APRs but the regular APR is above 10% and my credit is almost at the highest it can be. Are you all referring to introductory rates because I haven't seen any regular variable rates below 10% in a long long time. That being said, I agree - I don't like to reapply for CCs as I don't like the hard inquiry into my credit report (especially when I'm shopping for a new home!).
> 
> .............


USAA....whom I've been banking with forever and that's the rate on my cash back card.


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## mburnno (Oct 1, 2003)

chicagobrownblue said:


> Could those customers afford to pay for a new TiVo if their lifetimed TiVo becomes irrepairly damaged out of warranty? That is the risk you take with lifetiming a single TiVo.


I'm not saying that it is logical, just that Tivo could get more customers if you spread out the payments. Besides, Tivo's current plan of "if your box breaks you can't transfer the life time subscription" model sucks. At least that the way I remembered it from before. I could see if you could pay something like a $75 transfer fee to move the life time subscription over to the new box.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

mburnno said:


> I'm not saying that it is logical, just that Tivo could get more customers if you spread out the payments. Besides, Tivo's current plan of "if your box breaks you can't transfer the life time subscription" model sucks. At least that the way I remembered it from before. I could see if you could pay something like a $75 transfer fee to move the life time subscription over to the new box.


They still need to make money. They don't make money as it is. So doing that would be even worse for them. And they will transfer over the lifetime service while under warranty.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

The reality is TiVos and DVRs in general are not cheap and never will be. Wishing for different ways to pay for a TiVo isn't going to change what they cost. 

Frankly I think some people buying basic Roamios via the deals at BestBuy have done pretty good and gotten the cost with lifetime down to under $500. When you compare that to what TimeWarner Cable (my local cable company) charges to rent a crappy dual tuner DVR the Roamio only has to last a little over 2 years to be paid for. The only way to get "cheap" DVRs is if someone (Dish, Direct, FIOS, etc.) is using them as loss leaders to get new customers. 

If you have a TiVo and it breaks it is like everything else you either pay to get it fixed or buy a new one and as with many electronic devices, home appliances, etc. if you can not fix it yourself it may not be worth getting it fixed at all. If someone is really concerned you can get an extended warranty, in any event it is just a matter of time before each of us has something fail prematurely and have buy a new one sooner than we should have had to, for me it was a receiver, I had a high cost one ($700) only last 3 years, wasn't worth paying to fix it so I had to just suck it up and buy a new one.


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## Leon WIlkinson (Feb 13, 2000)

CrispyCritter said:


> Nonsense. I think my credit cards are in that range and my credit is excellent. I get quite good cash back from my cards, and in the past 35 years have only paid interest twice (mail problems) since I pay them off. Yes, I could undoubtedly get new cards with lower rates now, but why suffer the hit to my credit rating?


I thought the same but I have taken up 2 new cards in the last 2 years, and only seen a 1 point hit on credit karma from it, most likely it was from my high % of total credit used with the purchase on the card. which gave me 2 yrs to pay it off at 0%. 

More total credit you have access to will help in your credit score.


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## ferrumpneuma (Jun 1, 2006)

How about dividing lifetime into chunks for a premium?


$400 = one time charge lifetime service

$450 = total over four payments lifetime service


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## P42 (Jan 7, 2003)

Chasing deadbeats is expensive, and drives up the cost for everyone. Do you really want Tivo to run a credit check on you like AT&T/Verizon do?


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

ferrumpneuma said:


> How about dividing lifetime into chunks for a premium?
> 
> $400 = one time charge lifetime service
> 
> $450 = total over four payments lifetime service


If your like me I get credit card offers all the time, I could just take one of these cards out (some have no interest for 6 months) and make 4 payments, even with interest, the cost of such interest over 1 year at 20% would less than $50. (You make the first payment of $100 quickly to your card so you owe only $300, at the end of each month make only the min payment, at the 3rd month make a payment that brings you bal down to $200 your interest would be like $15, keep doing this each 3 months and by the end of the year your total interest would be like $30.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

mburnno said:


> They could have more potential customers if they spread the payments out. It weird how people think sometimes when it comes to financial stuff. If a user saw a price of $400 most people would say no way and stay away. If you allow the user to be able to think they could afford it by locking them in to $100 payments, then there is a chance more people may actually buy in to the lifetime plan. Of course as already mention you could just save the money but that would take more discipline which some of us do not have.


But then that creates the situation where TiVo would have to extend their "full support" window to last until the buyer pays off the Tivo, which would be an added expense for them, unless they make it where you have to make all payments within 90 days, and that almost makes spreading out the payments pointless, so why bother.


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## ferrumpneuma (Jun 1, 2006)

P42 said:


> Chasing deadbeats is expensive, and drives up the cost for everyone. Do you really want Tivo to run a credit check on you like AT&T/Verizon do?


They could turn off lifetime from their end.


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## aristoBrat (Dec 30, 2002)

P42 said:


> Chasing deadbeats is expensive, and drives up the cost for everyone. Do you really want Tivo to run a credit check on you like AT&T/Verizon do?





ferrumpneuma said:


> They could turn off lifetime from their end.


IIRC, Amazon recently did something similar, where they allowed people to spread the cost of a Kindle over four payments.

If a person stopped paying, Amazon blocked the device from connecting to their services, which essentially makes it a paperweight.

Since TiVo's a "service company", they could do the same thing. Block a TiVo from the TiVo Service, and it's essentially a paperweight. TiVo got its money up-front for the device, so why the need to chase deadbeats, or run a credit check?


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

ferrumpneuma said:


> How about dividing lifetime into chunks for a premium?
> 
> $400 = one time charge lifetime service
> 
> $450 = total over four payments lifetime service


ofgs!!


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## ferrumpneuma (Jun 1, 2006)

ltxi said:


> ofgs!!


Tell me, why do paycheck and car title loan stores exist?

I didn't say it was a good choice for the consumer. Some people would rather pay $112.50 x 4 than 400 x 1. It would be a middle value choice between subscription and lifetime.


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## ltxi (Feb 14, 2010)

ferrumpneuma said:


> *Tell me, why do paycheck and car title loan stores exist?*
> 
> I didn't say it was a good choice for the consumer. Some people would rather pay $112.50 x 4 than 400 x 1. It would be a middle value choice between subscription and lifetime.


Because people are stupid! At least wrt something like this. Buying/upgrading to newest, coolest DVR when you can't really afford milk for the baby is just.....arrgh!!!


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

ltxi said:


> Because people are stupid! At least wrt something like this. Buying/upgrading to newest, coolest DVR when you can't really afford milk for the baby is just.....arrgh!!!


At the time I got my first S2 DT (purchased used), the Premiere was just coming out, or about to, so "coolest" is a matter of opinion (it was plenty cool compared to my S1), but it certainly wasn't "newest", and I've never had any dependents, but if I'd sunk the entire cost of lifetime into it right away and it died in a way that was beyond my ability to fix a month or two later, I'd have felt that I'd been much more financially imprudent than what I actually did, which was sign up for an MSD'ed $9.95 per month.

So, when they hit my debit card for the April payment, they'll have gotten $477.60 (4 years x $9.95).

I think MSD lifetime was only $300 back in May of 2010, but even at $400, if they'd offered a "rent to own" 4 years of monthly and it's automatically lifetimed option, I'd be a much happier camper in about 3 months.

And I wouldn't have been quite as spurred on to pick up non-working lifetimed S3s and put them back in service at no further profit to TiVo.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Just the fact that this is being argued for three pages lends credence to it being an option.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

unitron said:


> So, when they hit my debit card for the April payment, they'll have gotten $477.60 (4 years x $9.95).
> 
> I think MSD lifetime was only $300 back in May of 2010, but even at $400, if they'd offered a "rent to own" 4 years of monthly and it's automatically lifetimed option, I'd be a much happier camper in about 3 months.
> 
> And I wouldn't have been quite as spurred on to pick up non-working lifetimed S3s and put them back in service at no further profit to TiVo.


But I got an offer to transfer my current subscription to a new TiVo Roamio purchased from TiVo for $174.99. Did you get this offer? Then depending on your machine you can add lifetime to it for $99 and sell it for a nice profit that should pay for your Roamio and then some.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

chicagobrownblue said:


> But I got an offer to transfer my current subscription to a new TiVo Roamio purchased from TiVo for $174.99. Did you get this offer? Then depending on your machine you can add lifetime to it for $99 and sell it for a nice profit that should pay for your Roamio and then some.


I got the same offer. I haven't gotten around to doing anything yet with my Lifetimed Premiere though. I was going to keep it as a backup for my GFs Series 3 TiVos, but I might as well sell it if I can get a decent price for it.


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## chicagobrownblue (May 29, 2008)

aaronwt said:


> I got the same offer. I haven't gotten around to doing anything yet with my Lifetimed Premiere though. I was going to keep it as a backup for my GFs Series 3 TiVos, but I might as well sell it if I can get a decent price for it.


I don't think lifetimed Premieres get much; lifetimed TiVo HDs are sought after.


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