It’s 2:00 p.m. as I write this. 2:00 p.m. Keep that time in mind.
Elise and I got a HDTV for Christmas this year. It’s a nice TV, too. And we were really happy to get it. We brought it home and I got it all hooked up with our newly acquired HDTV digital cable from Time Warner. I quickly realized that I couldn’t get an HD signal through our existing TiVo box unit. The next day I did a little research and decided that I needed to get us a HD TiVo box. I decided that I was going to stop at Best Buy on the way home from work. But before doing so, I called TiVo to ask if there was anything I needed to do with my account if I was going to get the HD box. They said, “No. Everything will be the same. We’ll just charge you a one-time $199 fee to transfer your lifetime TiVo membership.” I quickly pointed out that that just wasn’t going to cut the mustard. I wasn’t about to pay $199 to keep something that I already paid $300 for in the first place 3 years ago. The rebuttal I received was along the lines of, “Ummm, well, I’m really sorry, sir.” So I asked to speak to someone else. My case was escalated to a client services representative. I calmly and politely plead my case and explained that I felt as if I was being treated unfairly. She concurred and waived the transfer fee.
Damn skippy. TiVo was about to have themselves a pissed off customer. Now I’m happy. Sort of.
During my research and upon purchasing the TiVo, I learned that you have to have CableCARDs for your HD TiVo box. Basically a CableCARD is like a de-scrambler that is inserted into the TiVo box and does away with the digital cable set-top box. I then called Time Warner and scheduled a technician to come out to get my old digital cable box and install the CableCARDs. I, being the lay person that I am, am not qualified to insert these CableCARDs into the clearly marked slots on the front of the TiVo box that says, in cryptic cable technician language, “INSERT CABLECARDS HERE”.
So I called Time Warner a week ago to have a technician come out today to install the CableCARDs. In the meantime, we’ve been without TiVo. We have learned in the past days that we sadly rely on TiVo more than we had realized. We actually had to watch our television shows at their regularly scheduled times. This meant that we heard, on more than one occasion a conversation like this:
“I’m going to go give our loving offspring a bath.”
“Um, the season premiere of The Apprentice comes on in like 8 minutes!”
“Okay.”
“She doesn’t need a bath this week.”
So a technician was supposed to be here between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. today. I called Time Warner at noon to let them know that no one had showed to install these gem nugget CableCARDs. They told me someone would be calling me back within 15 minutes. An hour later I called back to let them know that still no one had showed up or called.
It is now 2:15 p.m. and I just received a call that the technician is on the way.
2:19. Cable guy is here. And there is much rejoicing as there will now be a clean child.