Off Wing Opinion

Yesterday I teased that I had something to write about TiVo and the way they treat some of their customers. My story (and stick with me because it's a long one) goes something like this:

I've been a TiVo subscriber since 2001, and I've been in love with the service from Day 1. Every good thing you've heard from somebody else about TiVo, you'd hear from me. No complaints at all.

I've been a customer of NHL Center Ice almost as long, and while I've had some difficulties through Comcast, I've never been upset with the product -- the telecasts of the games.

Back in December, I switched from Comcast Digital Cable to DirecTV. When I switched, I declined to take the new DirecTV DVR box because I already had a lifetime service subscription with TiVo. And being a happy TiVo subscriber, I wanted to show a little loyalty.

For a little while everything worked just fine, that was, until I hit Channel 764 and above on DirecTV, the channels reserved for NHL Center Ice.

Before, when I had Comcast, the TiVo program guide, which is essentially what you're paying for when you subscribe to TiVo, would always include the actual dates and times of games. I can't tell you for sure if they were there in the TiVo program guide all the time, but they were always there at least a day ahead of time, with a far enough lead time that if I ever wanted to record a game in advance, I could put it on the schedule to watch later.

But once I switched to DirecTV, all of the precise dates and times disappeared. Instead, it was replaced by a generic slug for NHL Center Ice, and the program guide parceled it into neat two-hour blocks rather than the three-hour block that I was used to seeing.

Granted, there are a number of workarounds. I could manually program TiVo to record the games I wanted to watch once I figured out what channels they were on using my DirecTV remote.

But that stuck in my craw. After all, I had paid for the TiVo program guide with a lifetime subscription. I signed on with TiVo when few others were. I thought I deserved the same level of service whether I got my games through Comcast or DirecTV.

But there was something else that bothered me: If DirecTv had the program schedule, then why didn't TiVo have the same information?

So I sat down in front of the television with my laptop and decided to wind my way through TiVo Customer Support. To say the least I was disappointed.

After a 10 minute wait (pretty good for a weeknight), the front line customer service rep imeditely transferred my call to a 2nd level technician named Reuben.

Reuben said that he was sorry, but that TiVo couldn't guarantee that the third party that collected program information from providers like DirecTV was accurate, and that was especially the case with the sports channels. When I asked why that was, Reuben said he couldn't disclose the details of their relationship with that 3rd party vendor.

That's when I asked to speak with Reuben's manager, K.D. After another five minutes on hold, I explained my question again, which is when K.D. got testy. He explained that TiVo had never provided precise information on sports channels like NHL Center Ice because they could never have enough lead time to gather the information. He said I must have been mistaken, and had probably used my cable remote to get the game information.

But once I installed my TiVo, I hardly ever used my remote again, and never once to check which NHL games were being telecast on NHL Center Ice.

I don't like being lied to. And after three stints on hold and three customer service reps, I told K.D. I didn't like being lied to.

Which is when K.D. told me that he had been a TiVo subscriber for just as long, and that I was wrong. He then asked me if I thought that I knew his job better than he did.

Which was when I asked to talk to his boss. And I asked for his full name, and an address where I could send a letter to complain. He only gave me a case number.

As you could imagine, I'm not happy. Believe me, I sympathize with the folks who work the phones. There's a chance that somebody isn't giving them the right information.

Which is when I decided to re-boot my TiVo, changed the settings to Comcast Digital and got out my camera.

Tonight on NHL Center Ice, Game One was scheduled to run on Channel 771 on Comcast Digital Cable in Reston, VA, the first channel in the tier that includes all of the NHL Center Ice games. The equivalent channel on DirectTV was Channel 764. But as these two pictures show, when my TiVo was configured for DirecTv's Washington area, there isn't any notation of the game that was scheduled for air between New Jersey and Carolina.

But after I rebooted my TiVo, guess what? Unfortunately, while the info for earlier in the evening hadn't been loaded onto my rebooted TiVo box, lo and behold, exact information for the start time of 10:00 p.m. EDT for the Phoenix-Colorado game on Channel 771 magically appeared.

Remember, this information is never supposed to be available on TiVo. Never has been, never will. Guess I know K.D.'s job better than he does.

Don't believe me? Click here, follow the links to the program guide and play with it on your own. The two program guides I used were Comcast Digital Cable in Reston, and DirecTV, Washington, D.C. The Zip Code is 20194. You'll get similar results from their online program guide.

So what's actually going on? I have a sneaking suspicion that TiVo and DirecTV don't get along, and that this might be DirecTV simply finding a way to tweak a former partner. But who knows? The one thing I do know is this: I don't like being lied to about a service I paid a lot of money to secure, essentially the service that makes TiVo worthwhile in the first place. And that makes me think a little less highly of TiVo.

And one last thing: The folks at the NHL, who after all rely on partners like DirecTV and Comcast to resell their product, ought to be asking some questions.

UPDATE: Amazing! It looks like TiVo and DirecTV, though they have decided not to date anymore, would still like to be friends. So, can you two start sharing program information again so it won't be awkward for your mutual friends when we all go out to dinner?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 at 12:53 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.