Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm exceptionally torn writing this review. When the Bolt is working there is nothing better, it increases my cable viewing experience to a level that makes it bearable to pay the exorbitant cable fees. However when it doesn't work Tivo support absolutely refuses to acknowledge something may be wrong with their product. Here's my story... I ordered the BOLT when it first launch at the end of September, Amazon shipped it quickly and I had it installed and Time Warner had the cable card in it and working in no time. Everything was awesome! The channel guide, the recording options, the built in MoCA adapter, commercial skipping, my Tivo Mini....everything worked flawlessly. Fast forward to February. I upgrade my service with Time Warner and they notify me that I need to use a tuning adapter in order to get all the new channels. (FYI, Time Warner's channels are still split between analog and digital) I thought it was no big deal, TWC provided the adapter at no charge and I was able to hook it up in under 10 minutes. And that's when my cable service stopped working. Symptoms ranged from poor channel reception to channels completely missing from the lineup. A call to TiVo support led me to believe that it had to be something wrong with the cable service and using the Bolt's onboard diagnostics they said there wasn't a strong enough signal coming to my house. Everything had been fine for 4 months, not sure why it would change now, but decided to take their word for it and got TWC to make a service call. TWC came to the house and checked everything out and said there is no reason it shouldn't be working properly, they verified all the coaxial cable in my house was up to par and even provided me with a signal amplifier. None of it worked, and by the end of the 3 hour house call they concluded that the Bolt, which was running so hot you could hardly touch the coax connector, was to blame. It was the day of the Super Bowl, so I had them leave one of their cable boxes so I could at least watch the big game. The next month and a half was spent on and off the phone with TiVo support and, at their direction, purchasing over $100 worth of additional cable line amplifiers. I spent an obscene amount of time trying to squeeze the best signal possible to the Tivo, but even hooking it up directly to the source cable coming into my house was no use. STILL, with all of the information I gave TiVo, they said it can't possibly be their product it has to be my service or the wiring in my house. Ok Fine, so I switch cable providers. I went with WOW! cable. All digital channels and the cable boxes they offer are a TiVo product, it will have to work, right? Nope! Got absolutely nothing, they switched out the cable card, even ran entirely new coax from the pole and into my house. Still nothing. They said it had to be the TiVo Bolt. That was my last straw, it was now 2 cable companies vs one TiVo. One more call to TiVo. I hated being "that customer" but I let them know in no uncertain terms they were absolutely losing me as a customer if they did not replace my Bolt. Again, they said it HAD to be my wiring, and it HAD to be my service. I reiterated my position and they let me know they'd "been doing this for 2 and half years", but they conceded to getting a manager. Finally, they agreed to replace my TiVo. BUT WAIT, there's more, they would replace it FOR $50 DOLLARS. THEIR DEFECTIVE PRODUCT, LESS THAN 6 MONTHS OLD, AND I HAD TO PAY FOR THEIR MISTAKE!!! After taking a few calming breaths, I let them know what a horrible policy that was, but agreed to the fee because if it didn't work at least I'd have a brand new Bolt to put on eBay. The new Bolt arrived that week. I plugged it in, set it up, had WOW! come out with a new cable card and wouldn't you know, IT WORKED!!! All of this could have been avoided if TiVo would have sucked it up from the start and admitted the problem MIGHT have been on their end. Everything is back to working flawlessly, but if one thing goes wrong I'm cutting the cord and using the damn thing for target shooting. side note: The cable installers think the tuning adapter had something to do with frying the original bolt, I'd suggest sticking with an all digital service to avoid the trouble.