Sean is a loyal TiVo customer, and has been for years. He’s even recruited others into the TiVo cult. It was this recruiting activity that allowed him to find out that he was getting a bad deal due to when he originally signed up for service.

Just had a fantastic customer service experience with Tivo that I want to share with you and your readers. I love my Tivo and just like they say, I could never return to normal tv again. I have been a loyal customer for 3 years, and have even bought my folks a Tivo through my account.

Recently I noticed that my regular billing cycle was costing me 18.95$ a month. As an avid consumerist reader I should’ve known better than to just shirk off auto-payments and know what is being debited from my account. I logged into tivo and saw that they have been charging me 18.95$ a month for the last year and a half (when my service plan ended) while only charging my folks’ Tivo at 10.95$ a month for the same level of service.

I picked up the phone with a calm, polite and collected attitude and was greeted by the cheery Yasmina. She informed me of how I was being charged their baseline price from when my Tivo subscription had ended, 18.95$ a month, though now the costs were 12.95$ a month. She agreed it seemed unfair but her only resolution was to sign up for a new contract to take advantage of the new price-scheme. She then passed me to Cindy in Advanced Customer Service. Cindy was great – we chatted about the rainy weather in Indiana where she lived and worked and the heat wave in NYC.

Without me even once referencing my conversation with Yasmina, Cindy solved my problem. She cut my monthly service fee to 12.95$ price scale AND set me up with 3 months free service as a ‘thank you for understanding.’ All those tips about being polite with CSRs paid off for me. I even beat her to the punch and asked for the customer survey, and she was so pleased to hear that!

Thanks Tivo for your great customer service and thank you Consumerist for arming me with great strategies to make my CS trek less daunting – and surely much more enjoyable for both Yasmina and Cindy!

Yay! Good service, a company that sees the point in keeping longtime, loyal customers!

(Photo: mightyb)

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