About two weeks ago, a Comcast technician came to my house to set me up with the new TiVo interface for my two Motorola DVR boxes. After some initial trouble, things started working correctly and everything seemed normal. I put together a video of the new interface and called it “way better than the alternative Comcast DVR interface.”
Multiple online support sessions and one no-show technician later, I now have two non-working DVR boxes. Here’s what happened.
First, a little background
Like many Comcast subscribers, I’ve found their customer service to be more than a little bit disappointing. So I went into the whole TiVo upgrade hoping against hope that we’d hit relatively few snags along the way. Much to my delight, we only hit one medium-sized snag during the initial setup. The technician had mistakenly authorized the DVR in the bedroom (a Motorola 3416) to get the TiVo software instead of the Motorola 3412 that he’d brought with him.
Once everything got sorted out, both Motorola boxes ended up getting the new software. I moved the 3416 to my main room because it’s faster and put the 3412 in the bedroom. So that’s the story so far. Two working boxes, a 3416 and a 3412.
The 3416 in the main room kicks the bucket
On Monday of this week, I waltzed into the main room of my apartment and found the Motorola 3416 flashing “8888,” then a single small dot, then a quick “Please Wait” message on the TV, and then it would power-cycle itself. The whole process takes about 15-20 seconds. After some initial unplugging and re-plugging and moving the box to a different room, I’d come to the conclusion that it’d crashed completely.
I turned to Comcast’s online chat feature to see what I could get accomplished and maybe schedule a technician to come out and replace the box. Here’s the transcript.
Doug > My Motorola 3416 cable box isn’t working. It’s showing 8888 and then rebooting itself constantly.
Angela.21460 > Hello Doug_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Angela.21460. Please give me one moment to review your information.
Angela.21460 > I would be happy to help with that.
Angela.21460 > Can you please unplug your box from the power outlet at the wall, wait 10 seconds and then plug it back in.
Angela.21460 > Also let me know when you have completed thisDoug_ > okay
Doug_ > doneAngela.21460 > Thank you
Angela.21460 > Please hold while I retrieve your account information.
Angela.21460 > Thank you for holding.
Angela.21460 > I have sent a signal to your box. This will update the data in the boxes’ hard drive. Please be aware that it may up to 20 mintues for all of the programs to load.
Angela.21460 > Can you please check for any changes?
Angela.21460 > Analyst has closed chat and left the room
The last three messages from “I have sent a signal to your box” to “Analyst has closed chat and left the room” were pasted in rapid succession. Poof. Angela.21460 was gone and out of my life forever. And the Motorola 3416 in the main room? Still broken.
I heard a yell from the bedroom. “Doug! I did something to the TV! It just turned off,” said my wife. Holy crap, Angela.21460 zapped the wrong box and left the chat room.
I went back into the chat room and got hooked up with another support analyst who tried unsuccessfully to zap the box in the main room. Time for a technician to come out. The earliest appointment was on Wednesday from 3-5. Sure, fine, great.
Meanwhile in the bedroom
After Angela.21460 zapped the box in the bedroom all willy-nilly, weird things started to happen. First, TiVo just stopped recording suggested shows. Then, TiVo stopped recording anything that wasn’t already scheduled. When I’d try to record a program I was watching or if I’d go into the guide to record a program in the future, I’d get this…
…which would stay up for exactly six minutes, at which point the screen would go black and I’d have to power-cycle the box to get it to come back up. Oh, and nothing would be recorded or scheduled to record. So I checked my Season Pass Manager.
Okay, no Season Pass Manager then. So no recording plus no scheduled recording plus no TiVo Recommendations recording equals why the hell do I pay for this thing?
Wednesday is no-show technician day
Instead of trying to fight my way through the support chat thing again, I decided to wait for the technician to show up between 3:00 and 5:00 on Wednesday, at which time I’d nefariously tell him that I needed him to fix the second DVR box just as he was about to leave after replacing the box in the main room. There was a problem, though.
The technician never showed up.
Nor did he call. Nor did anyone from Comcast call. I had my phone out on my desk, fully charged all day long and I’d double- and triple-checked my apartment buzzer (which has never NOT worked correctly). Still, by 7:00 at night, no technician and no call.
I went back to the online chat, which was now feeling like a dirty bus station to me.
The gory details are in the full transcripts at the end of this post but the basic exchange went something like this.
Doug: The tech never showed up today.
Rich: Thanks for contacting Comcast! It will be a pleasure to assist you! The notes say that the tech was there at 3:31 and was unable to make contact. He described your building as BRICK HSE BLK DOOR. I can reschedule the appointment for you.
Doug: Okay, well I was here all day and nobody ever called or rang the buzzer for my apartment.
Rich: I’m very sorry about that, would you like me to note the ticket with a special contact number?
Doug: Yes, use the same number you’ve always had for me. Another tech was supposed to come out in late December, too, and he never showed.
Rich: Here are three times that don’t work for you. Which one works?
Doug: None of them. I’d like a tech here tomorrow morning.
Rich: I only have three times that don’t work for you or next Tuesday.
Doug: I’ll take the box in to a service center because I don’t trust you sending a tech out here at the end of the day, knowing full well that he’s going to drive by my building, make note that I have a black door, and leave saying he couldn’t make contact so he can go home early.
Rich: You’re welcome! It was my pleasure to assist you!
Back to the bedroom
It’s now Wednesday night and I’ve resigned to the idea that the main room box is dead until I bring it in. Still, I want to watch some TV in the bedroom but I can’t record anything to watch later unless I want to stare at “Please Wait” for six minutes before the box conks out. So I try, like the true glutton for punishment that I am, to get help.
I get back in the god-forsaken chat room, this time with Ivonne. I tell her that the box in the bedroom freezes every time I try to record something and that none of my TiVo suggestions are recording either. She immediately offers to send a tech out on Saturday between 12 and 4.
Thanks but no thanks. I decide to put my technical prowess to the test and ask her to zap the box in the bedroom. She does, twice. Still nothing. She tells me to wait while she schedules a tech to come out between 12 and 4 on Saturday. Again, no thanks. I ask her, “What are my options as far as NOT having a tech come out here?”
“You need a tech. TiVo needs to be addressed by a tech. All we can do is reset the box.” I tell her that a tech was supposed to be here in December but he never showed up. Another tech was supposed to be here today but he never showed up either. I can’t rely on Comcast technicians to actually show up at my apartment.
“You would need a tech for TiVo. There’s TiVo information inside the box that the tech accesses,” she tells me when I ask if I can bring the two boxes into the local Comcast store, swap them out, and set up the new boxes at home.
So now what?
My options, as I see them are twofold. One, I can continuously reschedule technicians to come out here, hoping to get an appointment in the morning or to get a tech that gives a damn about working until 5:00.
Or two, I can bring both DVRs into a Comcast store and exchange them for working boxes at the expense of having TiVo (an interface that bricked my first box and doesn’t work even close to correctly on my second box) removed from my account.
I think I’m gonna go with option number two.
Full Chat Transcripts [Text File]
“Rich: Here are three times that don’t work for you. Which one works?”
The fact that he told you up front that the times WOULDN’T work for you was very considerate. What do you mean Comcast has horrible customer service?
Those Motorola boxes don’t even have the HP of a series 1 Tivo. Current Comcast DVR + Tivo hack = MEGA FAIL! It would make much more sense to task a manufacturer like Humax to make a custom box.
even though tivo lovers dis on it, my directv hd-dvr has been excellent. yeah, i was surprised too…
Mac + Miglia HD tuner + basic $12/month out-of-the-wall cable + EyeTV = TV heaven.
QAM carries HD signals for the local channels, so you can watch the Super Bowl or Summer Glau in Terminator in all their HD majesty. EyeTV software does everything that a Tivo does. EyeTV also exports to PSP, iPod, Toast DVD or Apple TV. And it’s all extraordinarily wife-friendly.
“BRICK HSE BLK DOOR”
After 10 years with DirecTV I had this same experience when looking to move to the new HD dish. Spend all day at home reading. No one knocks. No one calls. I eventually walked outside and found a note taped to my front door with a number. I called the number and its a dispatching center. She gives me this wonderful description of my front porch and then asked me when I want to reschedule. First available time: in 4 weeks. This after already waiting 3 weeks. I called DirecTV and canceled right there and then. 10 years as a customer meant nothing to them.
I then drove to the Comcast office, signed up for cable and scheduled a time two days from then. Bought an HD Tivo and set it up at home. When the day came the tech called – several times during the day to keep me appraised on where he was since one gig was taking more time than he thought it would. He did show but ran into issues. He left and came back. Still couldn’t resolve the issues but promised to have his manager come out the next day. His manager did. Even ran back to the comcast office once. These guys took a total of some 8 hours to get everything working correctly. I was rather impressed. The HD Tivo has been working flawlessly since.
As a TiVo owner for seven years, I will miss it when I finally let it go next month.
Why am I getting rid of TiVo? I think that linear television’s days are numbered. I will be ridding myself of cable/satellite and replacing it with Bittorrent.
Without cable or satellite, the TiVo is useless for it’s main purpose (and I’ve never used Amazon rental movies or Rhapsody rental music, preferring Netflix and ripping CDs to iTunes).
I will miss the TiVo interface. I will miss the TiVo way of searching for and scheduling content.
Having one less bill to pay will make it easier.
x.264 Torrents and AppleTV will be my new “DVR”, but nothing will replace TiVo in my heart.
Make that damn tech earn his money man! Is there a number you can call and get tech support without talking to robots on a chat session – I have never had good results from the chat rooms of ANY service – but a real call with a real person you are really yelling at seems to get the job done every time. You live in Boston right – I would let them know they fix this shit ASAP or you get your TV from another source (there have to be other options is a city that large!)
Comcast has two types of technicians that work up to and after 5PM:
1. Collections tech (when you don’t pay, they come to collect payment or their hardware)
2. Techs that fix stuff that breaks at night like junction boxes (these are guys who are smart enough to turn down being a ‘house call’ tech)
No other technician in their company will work after 4:30PM unless they’re already on a call when the time rolls around. Comcast is made of fail.
I don’t why, you are having so much problem, my cousing who lives in Boston said he got the TiVo interface with not problem at all; now he is enjoying his life, like nevever before.
Another good solution is just get a TiVo box, and stop paying rent for that box, your cable company gave you.
There are hundred of things TiVo can do, that, your cable box can not. Just check TiVo’s features and advantages on TiVo.com
Here’s another little didbit that I’m not sure everyone is aware of.
I opened my Comcast bill this month and found out that they up’ed there cost of the HD DVR to $19.95 a month!!! WITHOUT TIVO.
I called and confirmed this with them and was told that “Yes as of Feb 08 DVR is now $19.95/ month.
It’s cheaper to get a real TIVO box…. What hell are they thinking?
My comcast tivo (just got it a week ago) started doing the same thing yesterday, flashing 8888 every 15 seconds or so. It won’t turn on, unplugging it doesn’t help.
It happened just after I unplugged it to work around another problem, the giant locked up green screen. And oh, just before it got to the giant green screen I was getting pretty annoyed because the UI was so slow and unresponsive I could barely pause the show
I was watching. The Tivo interface on the Motorola box really just brings out the problems of that 3416 even more.
I’m getting a TivoHD and ditching the whole comcast DVR. Maybe I’ll ditch comcast too since Fios is cheaper in my area.
well despite doug aamoth’s warning i had tivo installed ,one instead of two, it took the contract tech almost the full day to install. first it was maby not enough power or the dvr box wasn’t compatable or the cable was wrong. nice guy but he couldn’t figure it out, after his” boss” dropped off another box[used and dirty and preset with another’s recordings and schedule the tech left me with a system that seemed to function but with no concise manual i could find little or no difference from the old dvr.
by the next day i had no guide, i had no on demand, and a green shadow on the figures and a blurred picture. then the infection spread to the three other hookups in the house.i call comcast and they know well enough not to answer, at least within the first forty minutes of waiting. this senario was repeated three more times over the next three days. i went to comcast office only to find out that this office could not arrange service but let me call from there, where i finally spoke to a tech who sympathized and sent forth another tech the next day this guy was as perplexed as the first tech but at least knew about tivo. as a last ditch effort he replaced the amplifier which seemed to work. four days later, here i sit with a tivo box that has its’ own mind and is infecting my other units all over again.
the only solution the tech tells me is that comcast will have to install sererate lines in from the street in order for tivo to work with my set up.
all i desired was tivo, a further improvment to the dvr. instead i have this thing that is growing like a fungus and a comcast service that is guessing at best .
if i buy a tivo from tivo and put a comcast dvr box back in , can i connect tivo to it and operate both? what would you do?
I live about 45 min northwest of Boston and I’ve had the same problem (random reboots and eventually the death cycle – 8888 to flashing . every 20 seconds). I’m on my third 3416 in 4 weeks, all replaced because of the same issue. The first call into the comcast tivo group was disappointing. 3 hrs on hold before I got fed up and called the regular cable tv support line and got through right away. Since then the tivo group has picked up within a couple minutes. The last support rep that I talked was exceptionally nice. She indicated that this is a common problem with the box and a patch should be coming out soon. The tech that delivered the third box confirmed that this is a common problem and Motorola either has released or will be releasing a patch in the next couple of weeks. They thought it might be caused by power fluctuations, but this doesn’t fit with my observations. The most recent time I was making a scheduled recording change and got the please wait. After about 10 min the box rebooted into the 8888 to flashing . cycle. The techs have been prompt and professional with only one exception. The second tech showed up an hour early while I was out. Thankfully my wife was home at the time. The whole tivo experience has been disappointing. I’m toying with the idea of dumping the comcast tivo dvr and building a mythTV box. This way I can at least back up the content and view it on other machines.
THINGS SOUTH OF BOSTON SEEM TO BE THE SAME AS NORTH OF BOSTON. AFTER THE THIRD VISIT FROM A COMCAST TECH I AM STILL WAITING FOR A FIX. SOME THINGS IMPROVED WITH MY OTHER DVR BOX AND THE DIGITAL BOXES ELSWHERE BUT THE TIVO BOX STILL HAS IT’S OWN MIND. THE TECH ALSO SPENT THE MORNING HERE, ALSO THOUGHT POWER FLUCTUATIONS OR WHAT EVER. WHEN HE LEFT THE PROBLEM UNFIXED HE SAID SORRY, HE OR SOMEONE WOULD GET BACK TO ME. I’M STILL WAITING. HE ALSO SAID APRIL 9 WAS THE NEXT SOFTWARE UPGRADE. I’LL GIVE IT UNTIL THEN FOR SOME ACTION AND THEN I’LL HAVE TO HAVE TIVO YANKED AND THE REGULAR DVR PUT BACK.
ON THE MOTOROLA WEBSITE THERE IS OFFERED SEVERAL OTHER DVR BOXES, SOME OF WHICH SOUND BETTER THAN THE 3416 BOX WE ARE LIVING WITH. DID COMCAST OPT FOR THE CHEAPEST MODEL TO USE? I AM GETTING REALLY FED UP.
I CALLED TIVO AND, AFTER A LONG ARGUMENT WITH THE REP ABOUT COMCAST/TIVO WHICH SHE DENIED EXISTED, I SPOKE WITH A MANAGER WHO KNEW BETTER. I THOUGHT THAT MABY I COULD SCHEDULE TIVO RECORDINGS FROM TV GUIDES WEB SITE AS IT CLAIMS BUT NOT SO, ONLY WHAT COMCAST HAS SUSCRIBED TO IS WHAT YOU GET AND DONT ASK TIVO FOR HELP. SHE DESCRIBED THE TIVO SERVICE TO ME AND IT SOUNDED BETTER THAN COMCASTS DVR SERVICE. SINCE COMCAST CHARGES TWELVE OR SO DOLLARS FOR THE FIRST BOX, AND THEN UPS THE CHARGE TO TWENTY ONE DOLLARS FOR THE SECOND BOX IT GETS PRICEY. I’M GOING TO WEIGH THE COST OF A TIVO BOX AND ITS YEARLY FEES AGAINST COMCAST AND SEE WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS. IT SOUNDS LIKE DIVORCING THE COMCAST DVR AND HOOKING UP INDEPENDENT TIVO MAY BE CHEAPER, AT LEAST FOR THE SECOND DVR.
WHAT GALL COMCAST HAS TO PUT THIS SYSTEM OUT WHEN THEY CLEARLY KNEW THERE WOULD BE PROBLEMS. IS THIS HOW BUSINESS IS GOING TO CONDUCT ITSELF IN THE 21ST CENTURY? SCREW THE CUSTOMER, WE LOBBIED FOR VARIOUS LEGISLATION OVER THE PAST DECADE THAT PUTS THE CONSUMER LAST AND THE STOCKHOLDERS FIRST.
tivo update from Rich D as of may 28 2008
i’m throwing in the towel. i have been oddly devoted to comcast fixing the problems with tivo and have been patient with it’s bugs. i have had perhaps twenty, yes twenty, site visits by techs. i can’t complain about these guys, they try their best. one tech in particular has become the main man on this problem, i call him directly now on his cell when i have unsurmountable problems. all the glitches described above have also been my glitches. tivo operates on its’ own and crashes whenever, and reboots on its’s own.it’s no picture just starting up logo or no guide or norecording or no on demand or no dice whatever, whenever without warning. if the tech didn’t give me his cell number i wouldn’t have been as patient; waiting on hold for the hours and hours for a telephone rep. from comcast is no way to gain customers. even the tech, at times had to wait on hold . yet, comcast still advertises and offers no explaination of any merit as to why they are toying with customers.
not only is the tivo service useless, the pictures on both screens that have the dvr boxes is distorted with a green halo around figures on one and a red halo around figures on the others. i thought at first it was the declining age of the sets but discovered without the tivo the pictures improved back to a normal resolution. it’s astounding to me that a company of the size of comcast would put it’s head in the sand with accelerating issues with one of its major rollouts.
as i referred to before, the tech is the only thread keeping me from exploding. but now the frustation has overtaken my patience and i have called for the tivo box to be executed. i hate to give up but, enough is enough, it’s back to the mostly reliable plain dvr box. besides,i’m not sure i was going to get any further benefit from tivo, since there was no manuel to read anyway. i wonder what tivo thinks now with their product being in the middle of so much trouble.
don’t get reeled in, just say …..
RD
********DO NOT ORDER THIS SERVICE********
I ordered the service less then a month ago and have been wanting to cancel ever since, but they say a tech needs to come on site and I can’t find the time right now.
The box is SoooOOOOoooo Slow! You hit a button and it responds literally a few seconds later and if you ask it to record a show it can take five minutes to add the show and in the meantime you can’t do anything. The box has crashed multiple times one time it gave all these funky errors on the display and then seemed to be doing a fsck disk or similar disk repair that took about an hour.
Do not waste your time or money, this is CRAP. It is hard to believe it could be worse then the comcast native DVR software, it is.
You have been warned, crap it is.
–RR
I am having my 5th box brought over by a tech tomorrow. Additionally, they have been to the house 3 other times to fix the equipment. When I called customer service to ask them to come up with a plan to keep me as a customer, they offered me an 11.80 refund for 4 months’ TiVo, and to re-bundle my services which I was unaware got un-bundled. After pushing, they upped the refund to $40… for eating about 20 hours of my time with these problems. I’m moving to FiOS.
does anyone believe that this should warrant a class action suit against Comcast? I think the whole conversion and especially the false advertising, “if you already have comcast you have nothing to worry about” deserves some serious action.