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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."
Good idea. That way the consumers that were "had" could get a $5 coupon and the lawyers could get millions!
I dunno who it is
but it prolly is fhqwhgads.
Hasn't it occured to most people here that a lot of the deals and rebates are just crap? Case in point...
A few weeks ago I attempted to purchase the Dell Axim x3i when it went on sale for $79. Dell took down the website and then put it back up. For those of you who know, this particular Axim actually runs for $379. Maybe it was a pricing mistake but when Dell left the page up, I thought they would send out the system. Didn't happen. In the days following our cancelled orders, Dell gave all sorts of rubbish answers to cover up the issue. Some people actually got their Axims, most others did not. The last story we heard was the deal was not a mistake but for corporate customers. I guess I was pretty irrate that I had ten different reasons for not getting my Axim and they all sounded like lies.
More recently, Circuit City was offering three rebates on a particular hard drive. However, the third rebate would not print so a 160gb drive which would have cost between $30-$40 actually cost double that. Bait and switch? You better believe it. The rebate house said that even if the third rebate printed, they would not honor it because they needed the original UPCs for all of them.
Now after the black friday sales and the dozens of rebates I have out, I am getting emails from rebate houses declining to give my money back to me for silly reasons like "date not on reciept". Although the date *IS* on the reciept. I guess what I am trying to say is that I am just tired of dealing with these deals and rebates since businesses are acting like crooks by not keeping their end of the bargain. I mean, if they really wanted to give us a rebate, why not just take it off at the register? I really hope a class action lawsuit or two is launched by consumers in the next few months over one of the rebate/bait-and-switch issues so business get back in line.
What the summary doesn't mention is that DNNA has been deactivating boxes that a) had stickers and papers that said they included service, b) were sold by retailers who assured customers they included service, c) DNNAs customer service said included service, even to people who asked about the $150 boxes, and d) often did show as having service when they were hooked up.
Then it took them a week before they put out clarifying press releases, and some stores continue to sell boxes with service-included stickers that DNNA won't likely honor. DNNA can blame the retailers all they want, but they're the ones deactivating boxes that contain their promises of included service. This as about as classic a bait-and-switch as there is.
I also have a Replay TV. I'm on my 3rd unit, as the first two went kaput and had to be RMAd. Customer service during this time was a mixed bag, some reps were great, others did not appear to be native speakers of English and I could only understand every other word they spoke.
However, now that I've got a working box I'm pretty happy with it. Never had any problem with dl'ing the channel guide. And with its "sharing" feature and client software that others have written, you can send shows off to your PC for storage (or I think even burning to VCD, though I've never tried that).
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.