Among people writing to the Consumerist tipline, our post from earlier this week about Roku sending the gift of a brand-new Roku 3 to their earliest adopters from 2008 has already become the gold standard of corporate awesomeness. It’s impossible for all companies to meet that standard all of the time…including Roku itself.

That’s Devin’s complaint. He’s been a customer for just a few months, and his remote quit working only a few months out of warranty. He wrote to us, comparing the two situations.

Devin wrote:

Roku recently sent “Original” customers a free roku 3 but for us new customers they wouldn’t even give me a new remote when the remote for my 4 month old roku died today. I was told by tech support that I could attempt to return the roku to Walmart, but since it was out of the roku 90 day warranty (he even stated by less than 30 days) it was “no longer Roku’s problem”. I then asked, “why do you guys not stand behind your products?”

The chat support said, “I am just doing my job as a technical support rep. Please do understand. Have a great day it has been a pleasure helping you.” He then disconnected the chat.

It’s all well and good to send original customers a free roku 3, but for us new guys at least stand behind the products we purchase from them.

We passed his concern on to Roku. They pointed out that yes, the boxes have a 90-day warranty, but they do make exceptions when exceptions are warranted. “However, the customer support team regularly considers individual customer situations and agents can escalate those for review so in some cases customers who have product outside of the 90-day warranty are accommodated,” they explained in an e-mail to Consumerist.

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