ReplayTV Price Drop Bait-and-Switch 308
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."
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought you could.
They stick by their promise (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:They stick by their promise (Score:5, Insightful)
The market share already pretty much belongs to Tivo, I'd say they basically screwed themselves and lost thousands of customers to Tivo forever. Dumbasses.
This is why you roll your own PVR. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Can you say "lawyers get all the money"? (Score:3, Insightful)
the solution is (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Can you say "lawyers get all the money"? (Score:4, Insightful)
You get what you pay for still true post 1999 (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:the solution is (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:old style? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:People knew it was too good to be true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn, do you work for the company?
Re:the solution is (Score:3, Insightful)
Do the math - One million people, screwed for roughly $150. That adds up.
If the lawyers kept even a whopping 10% of that, hey, I have no problem. They make an obscene amount of money (even with a five-way split among a team of lawyers, that one settlement would come out to more than most Americans will make in their entire lives), and the settlemnt group gets most of their money back. Basically, no worse to the actual consumers than the BS restocking fees some vendors try to charge (free hint - If your state has a "lemon law", you can probably force them to take it back, no questions asked, with no fees).
So no, I don't mind the lawyers making a fat wad of cash when they actually do a service for society, rather than the usual of making all our lives miserable.
But when a team of five lawyers in a case such as I describe each gets $25 million, with each claimant getting a gift certificate for $5, and some random charity of the judge's choosing getting the balance, I have a problem with that. Not just because of the absurd level of greed involved, but because it does not serve justice. Justice, though admittedly a difficult to quantify quality, includes two main points - Relief for the victim(s) as the FIRST priority, and punishment for the evildoers as a close second.
With that, you can see why most of us have a problem with class action suits. Not so much because the lawyers profit, and not because the company involved doesn't suffer a bit of token punishment, but because the actual victims get absolutely no relief whatsoever. In this case, that means a million people each end up $150 (sorry, $145 minus a bit of good karma) short, Replay TV ends up losing even more between their own lawyers and lost sales, and the lawyers end up making a killing that directly stems from suffering on both sides of the suit.
So while I don't grudge the lawyers an honest living, just "follow the money", and you'll see why most of us have learned to laugh mockingly at anyone offering us a part in a class action suit.
Re:People knew it was too good to be true... (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Clearly you've never worked retail. (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
there are alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Time for a class action suit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You get what you pay for still true post 1999 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I call bullshit. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:The egregious part of this.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is why you roll your own PVR. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Problem is that while MythTV requires two things that cannot be bought. Knowledge and interest about computers and linux. That leaves out about 99% of the users. Or would you recommend MythTV to someone who doesn't know anything about computers and/or linux and doesn't want to?
Re:You get what you pay for still true post 1999 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I for one am sick of things like this... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Get a Tivo (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Clearly you've never worked retail. (Score:3, Insightful)