Lessons Learned from ptvupgrade.com

[pdt]

First and foremost this post is meant to let others learn from my experience - it is by no means a flame.

I am new to tivo hacking and just want to make sure others like me know exactly what they need an how they might be treated if they are mislead into purchasing the wrong item.

The following is a series of emails between me and support@ptvupgrade.com

Customer Support <support@ptvupgrade.com> Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 9:38AM
To: ******
Thanks for submitting your ticket regarding User Contact Request : Product Support.
For your reference, our ticket number is NQS-97694-820.

Please note that your question was submitted to the "product support" queue.
We will attempt to locate you in our customer database and resolve your problem.
If you are currently not a PTVupgrade customer or have not provided enough
information for us to locate you in our customer database, please resubmit your
question to the appropriate category or resubmit the necessary information to
look up your original order information.

You will be automatically updated when the status of your ticket
is updated, however if you wish to check or review the status or
content of your ticket, please proceed to:

http://helpdesk.ptvupgrade.com/support-center/

and use your email address for your login; if you have not yet registered
or confirmed your registration with our system, you can have your password
and confirmation information automatically mailed to you.

Thank you,
PTVupgrade

Ticket Contents Below:
The following was generated by PTVupgrade Contact Us.

Subject: Product Support
Name: *****
Email: *****
Phone: *****

Message:
Yesterday I placed order# ***** for the InstantCake cd for S2SA-MODEL: TCD240080. When I tried to use it on a new 80gig WD drive I got the error about the drive being to small. I did some searching on ddb and found that it seemed I was out of luck. (odd thing is it was the same mode drive that I was replacing).

I then placed order# ***** for the S2SA-MODEL: TCD240040 image and it worked perfectly - thanks

I am wondering how I can get a refund on the first image ordered since it wouldn't work.

Please let me know.

Thanks,
*********

--
PTVupgrade Contact Us

Customer Support <support@ptvupgrade.com> Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 9:50AM
To: *****
Tom -

I am sorry however there are no refunds on InstantCake. This is
something we are very clear about at the time of purchase and on our web
site. The InstantCake documentation indicates that it is expected that
the drive you use be larger than your original drive, as do the release
notes. This is discussed in the support area of our web site, and is
also discussed at our forums at http://forum.ptvupgrade.com. Lastly,
had you used our forums for support and not found the supporting
information, you could have posted there -- we would have made some
additional suggestions which most likely would have resulted in you
being able to use the copy of IC you originally purchased. In the
future, I'd recommend using the published support resources prior to
making an additional purchase, as online purchases for download are
non-refundable once they are processed.

Thx

[pdt]

Continued from previous post


***** Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 10:59AM
To: Customer Support <support@ptvupgrade.com>
Please direct me to the information on you site that could have helped
me to use the first version. I was certainly unable to find any
information implying that was the case.

I was only able to find posts on ddb from you saying I was out of luck.

I can also assure you that if you put up an image on your site and
claim it should work with an 80 gig unit and then have the software
tell me it should work with a 40 or 80 gig drive that it should work
as advertised.

Please reconsider the refund as I feel that the product did not work
as advertised and it is reduclious that a proper image should cost me
$50.
[Quoted text hidden]
Customer Support <support@ptvupgrade.com> Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 10:07AM
To: *****
Release notes:

http://forum.ptvupgrade.com/showthread.php?t=948

Instructions:

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/support/instantcake/

I don't recall ever telling you on DDB that you were out of luck, and I
also don't recall saying the image would work with a 40 or 80GB drive.
You could have use our free boot CD and the PTVbake-special script to
attempt to restore to your 80GB drive, without a larger swap space.

You've just gotten personal support on an unsupported product; all of
this information was at your disposal prior to your purchasing a second
copy of the software; you could have used the published resources and
posted your question to our free forums prior to making that purchase.

As I said, there are no refunds on downloadable products, please keep
this in mind for the future.
[Quoted text hidden]
***** Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 11:24AM
To: Customer Support <support@ptvupgrade.com>
"This distribution contains the following InstantCake image:

TiVo TCD240080 Version 4.0.1b-02 Standard Release

Works with all TCD240 units (40-hour and 80-hour)"

That's on the disc and I appologize it wasnt ddb - it was your forum -
http://forum.ptvupgrade.com/showthread.php?t=565

on top of that your instructions say "We do not recommend you use your
existing TiVo disk drive for InstantCake installations - keep your
TiVo drive in a safe place as a backup; at least until you've used
InstantCake successfully at least once."

This implies that it can work on the original drive. Which it obviously cant.

I dont need support on this product as i already stated that the
second version worked fine - this is customer service on a purchase
not software support. Please issue the credit.

Thank you.

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:07:14 -0600, Customer Support
[Quoted text hidden]
Customer Support <support@ptvupgrade.com> Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 10:33AM
To: *****
What you just quoted is 100% correct.

And in my previous response to you, I told you how you could have made
it work on your original drive, although that implication is not in what
you quoted. There is an explicit recommendation there about using
larger than the original drive.

In any case, you clearly don't get it. No refunds means NO REFUNDS.

You didn't follow the directions. You didn't use the support resources
provided to you. And it must feel terrible knowing you spent additional
money and then finding out that you could have solved the problem, but
again, we don't pay for your mistakes.

If you wish to dispute the charge, feel free to do so, but keep in mind
that our policies are clearly stated, and that your energy might be
better spent on something more productive. Also keep in mind, having
spent $40 instead of $20, you've gotten a great product for your money;
something its clear you are not appreciating.
[Quoted text hidden]
***** Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 11:43AM
To: Customer Support <support@ptvupgrade.com>
I actually spent $50 and I do feel that for $30 I did get a great
product however I have consulted my lawyer and he feels that you
certainly have misleading information on your web site about this
issue. Nowhere does it clearly state that the software will no work
on an 80 gig drive. In fact I quoted 2 placed where it implies it
WILL work with an 80 gig drive.

I will give you one more chance to refund the $20 before I will be
happy to let everyone of your potention customers know about your
unbeleivable lack of customer service skills.

I also assume you can charge for this GPL sopftware as bandwidth
charges so maybe I should offer to send it to people for free - how
about the first 10 get it free - thats $200 out of your pocket.

Maybe I could send out 20 copies.

[pdt]

and his final reply

Customer Support <support@ptvupgrade.com> Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 10:48AM
To: *****
This is getting ridiculous.

1) What you quoted makes no suggestions about the drives that can be
used. We recommend you don't use your original drive. The instructions
say to use one that is larger. Why it is that you think you've "proved"
something here, is beyond me. Nowhere do we state that it will work
with an 80GB drive, (even though it will, in most cases), so why you
keep insisting this, is also beyond me.

2) Go ahead and redistribute the product, it is GPL. Maybe you can add
some value here instead of blaming others for your mistakes.

3) If you were talking to your lawyer, and he is competent, you might
run the threat you just made by him. Go ahead and publicly tort my
business and see where that gets, you legally.

This conversation is over.

[captain_video]

I'm not quite sure why you posted this here as it is clear you didn't research the product before you bought it. You can't blame PTVUpgrade because you didn't read the fine print.

[pdt]

I posted this here - in the newbie forum so other know what I didnt. I'm not blaming him for anything other than not being clear on his site about the product. I dont want anyone else to waste the money if they dont have to.

I researched it as far as reading the item description on his site. Thats all I'm saying - his description is not completely correct and I want to make sure others dont waste money like me.

I'm actually trying to do something nice for people here. Maybe you missed that.

[JJBliss]

Moved to Problems with Companies

[Jamie]

2) Go ahead and redistribute the product, it is GPL. I can't believe the myth that TiVo software images are GPL'd is still being propagated. This is blatently false. The tivoapp application and many other things in tivo software images are NOT covered under the GPL. Please read the "mere aggregation" clause quoted to me by PTVupgrade here (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showpost.php?p=188765&postcount=258).

If you believe this to be false and believe that tivoapp really is covered under the gpl, please file a request for source with TiVo. I'm sure we could do much more sophisticated hacks if we had the source for tivoapp.

[JJBliss]

PDT,

While I have no problem with you criticizing PTVUpgrade if you feel you've been wronged, be very careful about the redistribution of the Tivo image from the InstantCake CD.

Despite PTVUpgrade's insistance that the Tivo OS is GPL and therefore redistributable, most folks in the know understand that it is not. However, it seems that PTVUpgrade has gotten some special dispensation from Tivo since they have not challeged his business model as much as they have challenged others.

You might be subject to legal criticism from Tivo for the redistribution of their proprietary software, though I doubt you'd be liable for "torting" PTVUpgrade's business (whatever the hell he thinks that means).

The main issue at hand here, is that you should have read the rather obvious caveat about downloadable software not being refundable.

JJ

[pdt]

That's a good point - I removed the part about sending out the cd

also - I did read that but if a product is not advertised correctly a good customer service plan is to help your customer.

It's not as though I purchased and downloaded it and then asked for a refund. I think its reasonably clear from my follow up purchase for the exact same software for a smaller drive that I didnt need both.

[snowman]

I'm with you on crappy customer service. Now if you'd ordered one for a series 1 unit and 1 for a series 2 unit or something like that, I can see not refunding. However, when you merely got the same freaking software twice (though from a smaller drive), and you obviously meant to use it on one device, I think PTV is being a bit small about the whole thing.

[fixn278]

blah... blah... blah... It all sounds like noise to me.

Go to Symantec, buy a piece of software online, download it, and then ask them for a refund. You won't get it. Try it with any other online software vendor. See what happens.

[sneel]

I had purchased NAV 2004 from Symantec last year and downloaded it. It would not even install properly for me. After contacting support, I was refunded the total purchase price and asked to simply destroy my copy... not such a good product IMHO, but nice service.

Since they saw that he did by the correct image later, they could have been nice and made a exception for him. They didn't have to though.

Sorry that doesn't add much to this thread's worth.

-Steve

[doc_u]

blah... blah... blah... It all sounds like noise to me.

Go to Symantec, buy a piece of software online, download it, and then ask them for a refund. You won't get it. Try it with any other online software vendor. See what happens.

Had a problem with Intuit's tax software last year, (business version), got a complete refund for the one I downloaded which wouldn't work for my company.

They were very nice about it, too.

I guess PTVUG can decide their own refund policy, but I agree that it seems a bit petty, the guy DID buy the right version shortly after the wrong one...

Good to have this info, in case I or someone I know wants to do business with PTVUG.

- Doc