TiVo - Give Loyal Customers an Upgrade and IMPROVE your Business Too!

C'mon TiVo, show us a little love out here! There are MANY of your long time customers still running old boxes with Lifetime service, simply because we paid big prices for them back in the day and think we still deserve to reap the reward. Most of us would LOVE to have newer boxes, and we would spend the money on them if not for the injustice of having to buy all new expensive service plans too.

Now I know you want to make money - I respect that. But it is clear you also want to get these old machines OFF your service load - you won't even allow an existing Series 3 level box renew service or even be activated for the very first time if still new-in-box. You are still providing service to the existing Lifetime boxes (Thank you !), but it is obvious you do not want to do that. So here is a solution suggestion for you that would not cost you a cent in service fees + sell new hardware too. It should make almost everybody happy:

Offer a $50 Lifetime transfer for NEW EQUIPMENT purchases ONLY - make it tuner for tuner, and require the old boxes be deactivated in 60 days following the transfer. Here's how it would work:

1. Transfer only valid with purchase of new equipment and first activation.
2. Transfer only valid for equal number of tuners, so to activate a new 4-tuner box with transferred Lifetime, one would have to deactivate enough older boxes to equal 4 tuners (such as two Series 3 boxes).
3. If transferring less Lifetime tuners, must pay pro-rated cost of new Lifetime. For example, if purchasing a new 4-tuner TiVo and only transferring one old 2-tuner TiVo, the cost would be the xfer fee + 50% of the new Lifetime fee for the new box.
4. Any older TiVo that is used for the service transfer is allowed to operate for a maximum of 60 days after activation of the new machine to allow owners time to copy programs, To Do lists, etc., and then the old box is deactivated and removed from service forever.

Lots of benefits for you to offer this program. You want to stop supporting these old boxes, this lets you do that. We reduce electrical use for customers who have multiple older boxes just sitting and spinning simply to keep using the extra tuners. You generate LOTS of positive support from your customers. You sell more new hardware immediately. You probably sell lots MORE new hardware by getting your long-time customers up to current platform technology (think Minis to support more TVs). You do not loose a single subscription fee, since you are only providing service the the exact same number of tuners after any transfer that you were prior to the transfer. In fact, you actual support costs should drop significantly, since everything would now be current hardware and software, and with same number of tuners, there will actually be fewer boxes to support. If you REALLY want to find a way to completely remove all this old hardware and software from use and support, a plan with features like this would allow you to force the deactivation of the older boxes while significantly reducing the amount of anger such a move would generate - not everyone will want to buy new hardware, but if you at least give them this option, they can't say they are simply being abandoned.

This is a win-win for everybody! Please do consider it!!!