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ReplayTV Price Drop Bait-and-Switch
jkeyes writes "Last week on 12/17 DNNA (new parent company of Replay TV) decided to drop the Replay TV 5504 model down to $149, yet the boxes and website said that it came with three years free service. So immediately it appeared on deal sites like FatWallet with Replay telling people on the phone who called that yes all 5504 models include 3 years of service so immediately Circuit City & Amazon sold out. Then on the 12/22 DNNA released a press release annoucing the new price and claiming that the 5504 models NO LONGER have 3 years free with them and blamed the retailers for dropping the price too soon. Even though their own Customer Service Reps were saying when it first dropped that you got 3 years free. Also to add to the issue the actual devices have giant green stickers on them saying Three Years Free AND a paper inside telling you this. Replay went on to say that if you had a problem with this or your replay was deactivated to just return it to the retailer you purchased it from."
I thought you could.
Goo goo g'joob.
Replay went on to say that if you had a problem with this or your replay was deactivated to just return it to the retailer you purchased it from.
Well, so people have a problem, they got a rotten deal, so they can return it and get their money back. Sounds like basically they have the right to exercise their 3 year warranty immediately.
(By the way, the solution to any ReplayTV problem is called Tivo. Even without dodgy deals, it's always been a better idea to get a Tivo than a ReplayTV)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I believe there was a Ask Slashdot a few weeks ago regarding building your own PVR. The majority of the comments seemed say "Why bother, just buy a TIVO/Replay TV, its already done for."
Well, this is why you roll your own. Yes, its a little more work, the cost is pretty much the same, but there is no monthly fee, and features don't get yanked out from under you.
MythTV is absolutely amazing, and its evolving incredibly fast. If your lookinng for a PVR, I recommend giving it a shot.
Why is there always calls for class action suits? The leech lawyers get all the cash and the consumer gets a coupon for $20 off any product from the company they had the complaint against.
--- Ban humanity.
Of course, on /. we are morally opposed to lawyers making any sort of reasonable profit, so we would never participate in such a suit. We just complain and cry over the unfairness of it all, and hope some diety magically fixes the problem.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
That's a bummer that this has happened. What really blows me away is how people seems to forget that old adage.
Even more importantly, people seem to ignore TIME as a factor of cost. As in the time it takes to return a cheaper product that breaks. The extra amount of time it takes to setup products compared to others on the market, and another important time waster, waiting for products or ipod drivers to ship for linux when much better solutions may be out there now on other platforms.(Can you say Gimp vis - a vis, photoshop?)
I guess i look at these things as tools. I always try and find tools that are going to not only entertain me or empower me but also save me time and hassle. Because that is the most costly of all factors in ALL our lives.
In the last year i bought:
a) An ipod: not waiting for a org vobis play becuase frankly i don't have the ears of a dog to "tell" the difference.
b) itunes music store: best of breed dgital music store that is one click easy, and i know the artists are getting SOMETHING unlike kazaa.
c) a dual g5- damn fast.
d) OSX - best of breed combonation between the power of unix and open source and commerical apps.
( I already own a tivo and knew how much better it was then other solutions out there so i won't even bring that one up. Nor will i bring up the point of how much TIME and money of yours it would take to build an myth tv type solutions.Nor do i want a pc in my living room. I know i know put it somewhere else and drag a line in. No thanks.)
Did these cost me more? In some cases yes. But whatever the delta in price was i can GUARANTEE you that i have more than made up for it in increased productivity and not having to pull my hair out trying to get these things set up.
Moral of this story?
Sometimes paying MORE ends up costing you LESS...
Happy holidays...
Best of New Years...
I am sad to see DNNA shooting themselves in the foot like this. I love my Replays. I have two of them, connected on a 100 Mbps switched network here at home. A show on one Replay can be streamed over the network to the other Replay. In other words, I can play back a show recorded on the bedroom Replay, from the living room Replay - while the living room Replay is recording a show off the air. Try that with a VCR. (I cannot tell if Tivo has that capapbility - I went to www.sony.com/tivo and got redirected to sonystyle.com - and a search on that web site for "tivo" came up empty.)
Anyway, back on topic, I am very disappointed that the management at DNNA is bound and determined to ruin the company. I understand as a company get worried about money, they focus on the pennies, and lose sight of the dollars. They need to reverse their attitude if they want to survive - they need to cut deals that will grow their userbase, not shrink it. But they don't appear to see that. It is sad.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
It isn't a fscking loophole if the box says it comes with the service and it also comes with papers that say so.
Damn, do you work for the company?
I think I know "something" about DVRs. I read most slashdot articles about them, but don't yet own one. So when I see a box with a sticker on it that says "3 years included", that's precisely what I'd presume it means. I'd probably figure it was just a very competitive, limited time promotion. Isn't that odd?
And what sucks most about it is the timing. You know that a lot of these things were given away as gifts. Due to this mistake, scam, whatever you want to call it, the givers learn on or after Christmas day that they are giving a gift that the recipient is going to start paying for right out of the box (or just won't work). I don't like having to apologize for attempts at generosity. And this is the worst time of year to have to return anything.
Intentional or not, it was a really lame move.
Yes, the new owners have an excellent long term plan, screw as many people as possible to get $$$ in the execs pockets, and then file for bankruptcy shortly before shutting down the company.
:)
Hmm, that sounds like only a short term plan, but the company executives will benefit from it for a long time after they go out of business. In that sense, it is long term.
I can't afford a sig!
Price dropps are frequently schedueled in advance, sometimes many months in advance to coincide with new products, and of course attractive promotions to deplete old inventories.
Someone who just got their MBA, and probably would be better put to use as filler in some construction project entered the wrong date. Who knows where? With price matching in consumer electronics everyone could well eventually pick up the error, which I've actually seen bounce through chains across many weeks.
Part of the way the manufacturer probably managed this drop in price, wasn't to simply write off the loss, but change the terms. To that end they undoubtably produced merchandising kits, and bought some advertising clearly indicating the old terms were not valid, and what the new terms were.
So Replay, however crappy their product might be, is right. If you bought it at the old expensive price it comes with an additional two years, that's what the retailer paid them for, if you bought it at the new low price, the retailer only paid them for one year. Any bitching you have should be saved for the retailer. And while you're bitching just remember, this complex fast interlocked reliable system is what allowed for the speedy and catastrophic replication of probably ONE MISTAKE. If you want to crawl up their ass instead of being a human being, fine, but remember the people you're talking too aren't the ones that made the booboo, they're unable to exact your retribution on those who were, who might well be enjoying a performance bonus, and most people I know make at least one mistake a day.
But as was mentioned in other places, my time is worth something to me. Look at it this way, if I want to take a trip somewhere I can take Greyhound for $15, or I can take a plane flight for $400. But it will take a day of my time to get there on Greyhound, and a couple hours on a plane. So, I have to miss a day of work to take the bus.
Well, I make more than $385 per work day, so it actually costs me MORE to take the bus than a plane.
You can apply this same principle to other things, open source PVRs amongst them. I just don't want to screw with it. I essentially pay TiVo to maintain my PVR for me because I don't want to do it.
I find the people who have the most trouble understanding why someone would pay for something are young people. They have no money and a lot of time, as opposed to lots of money and no time. So, they'll do things like spend 2 days downloading a movie in order to save $15.
The RIAA and SPA are fools for not understanding that there are things that college people simply won't pony up the dough for (like Photoshop) at full price. On the other hand, to a graphics arts professional, $500 for Photoshop is nothing. Due to the better features and useability of it, they''ll make the $500 back on a single contract job.
Anyway, perhaps now you can see why the right solution for you isn't necessarily the right solution for everyone.
As to being a lifetime corporate cash cow, I don't like to buy anything on subscription. Some things (like cell phones or cable) are only available monthly. But for the most part, anything I can pay one time for I will do so on. That's why I bought the lifetime TiVo option for $250 (I think). Since I'm a DirecTiVo customer, I get lifetime service on as many TiVos as I have, not a single unit. So, I also share your annoyance at becoming a lifetime cash cow. But I also know that some things are worth it if you can't get it any other way.
Perhaps some day in the future, MythTV or whatever will be good enough that paying for TiVo makes no sense to me, even at a few dollars a month. I predict that for me that day is a long time off since I use DirecTiVo and I don't expect MythTV to be able to legally or reliably operate directly on DirecTV streams like my DirectTiVo can.
As much as i hate being part of a 'sue-happy' society, sometimes the legal system is needed to keep companies that pull that sort of crap in check.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Responsability for correcting the fault lies with he who makes it, in this case the retailers.
The price was dropped by large numbers of stores in at least three national B&M chains as well as several online stores. A little Occam's Razor exercise: What's more likely, that DNNA gave clear directions and a half-dozen large retailers all made the same mistake, or that DNNA put out a muddy, ambiguous message? Keep in mind that DNNA is a company that thinks making these kind of changes right before Christmas was a dandy idea. There are also numerous accounts of people being told by DNNA that $150 units included service, so DNNA was at least as confused about what was going on as the retailers were.
Even if it is the retailers fault, the problem should be worked out between DNNA and the retailers. Customers did not create this mess, but DNNA is the one "fixing" it by taking something their customers were told they had paid for. When a company sells something to you for a mistakenly low price they're not allowed to correct their mistake after the fact by coming to your house, taking whatever they sold you and tossing a refund on the table. It should be no different with electronic services.
This is not bait-and-switch, this is fraud. Bait-and-switch is when the salesman talks consumers into buying a more expensive product than what was advertised. (The advertised product may or may not be actually available to someone with a strong enough will to not fall victim to these simple mind tricks). This is outright fraud.
I do wish some of the states attorney generals would start looking into rebates. They are a huge rip-off and I really do suspect some of them are made hard or impossible to fulfill.
Let's face it - a place like Best Buy (one of the worst rebate scammers IMHO) has a full record of your purchase in their databases. Why should their fulfillment house need anything more than the receipt number as proof of purchase? Yet I've been denied rebates from them for not including stuff that was never even mentioned on any of the rebate forms! I've also had forms with conflicting requirements printed in different spots.
The latest thing seems to be the "claim your rebate on-line" stuff. Sure, you can enter your info in, but they STILL expect you to mail them the UPC, receipt, and 3 or 4 other random items! Why?! Surely the stores's own rebate site can confirm the purchase was made without any of that, and what does a UPC prove exactly anyway? Just that you found a box somewhere.
I also just picked up a second DirecTiVo. I bought one 2 years ago at Circuit City for $99 US. While down here in Atlanta visiting family for the holidays I saw DirecTiVo version 1, Hughes variety (my first is a Phillips, very similar) on sale for $99 with no strings attached. Jumped at the chance - my wife is already happy at the prospect of having her own DirecTiVo in a 2nd room. TiVo is like a cult - nobody understands it till they have one and then they try to convert everyone else. Never seen that effect with the Replay units.
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk