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TiVo Complaint - Unethical Business Practices - TiVo HD Upgrade
TiVo HD Upgrade - Complaint
We purchased a Series 2 TV a few years ago with a lifetime service contract. Then, last year, we upgraded, for some hundreds of dollars, to a new TV HD box with yet another lifetime service agreement. When we did this, they said that the old Series 2 would continue to work for a year. Since we have only one TV in the house, the Series 2 went unused.
Now, going over my credit card statements, I noticed that they've been billing me $12.95 per month, starting a few months ago. It turns out that there was a provision in the upgrade agreement (or at least they're telling me this) that said they would start monthly billing after the year had elapsed. I canceled the service, and am out something like $26 or $39 dollars for not noticing this.
My problems with this are:
1. The one-year continuation of service on the old TV box was positioned to me at the time as a way to ensure that I could watch/transfer/delete the programs already recorded, since the new TV HD box would arrive with no content (obviously). Made sense. Charging $12.95 per month is inconsistent with that principle.
2. The start of recurrent billing after a year was not made clear to me. I'm not going to dig up the original contract to confirm their account, or see how fine the fine print is, since I've wasted too much time on these bozos already.
3. It's an interactive service, so TV knows fully well that I haven't used their service on the old account for over a year. For them to start billing on a dead account after a year is just plain greedy. The default should have been for customer to request a resumption after a year. If they were truly interested in customer goodwill, they wouldn't be charging for an unused service based on some alleged technicality.
I hope TV is really whooping it up with the $26 (or whatever) that they squeezed out, because this is the absolute last dime they will ever get from us.
Now, going over my credit card statements, I noticed that they've been billing me $12.95 per month, starting a few months ago. It turns out that there was a provision in the upgrade agreement (or at least they're telling me this) that said they would start monthly billing after the year had elapsed. I canceled the service, and am out something like $26 or $39 dollars for not noticing this.
My problems with this are:
1. The one-year continuation of service on the old TV box was positioned to me at the time as a way to ensure that I could watch/transfer/delete the programs already recorded, since the new TV HD box would arrive with no content (obviously). Made sense. Charging $12.95 per month is inconsistent with that principle.
2. The start of recurrent billing after a year was not made clear to me. I'm not going to dig up the original contract to confirm their account, or see how fine the fine print is, since I've wasted too much time on these bozos already.
3. It's an interactive service, so TV knows fully well that I haven't used their service on the old account for over a year. For them to start billing on a dead account after a year is just plain greedy. The default should have been for customer to request a resumption after a year. If they were truly interested in customer goodwill, they wouldn't be charging for an unused service based on some alleged technicality.
I hope TV is really whooping it up with the $26 (or whatever) that they squeezed out, because this is the absolute last dime they will ever get from us.
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