WeaKnees Blog – Page 104 – The blog about the DVR SuperStore WeaKnees

R10 and R15 Confusion

We’ve been getting more and more phone calls – a lot today – from customers who ordered a TiVo from DirecTV and got an R15. You might only notice if you were familiar with the TiVo interface, so this may be a much larger problem. But in any event, it seems that the phone reps at DirecTV don’t differentiate between “TiVo” and the generic term “DVR” and they’ve made at least a handful of customers pretty unhappy.

One such customer claimed to have the order for a TiVo in writing specifically using the word “TiVo” and if we can get a scan of that, we’ll post it.

WeaKnees News

A Night without TiVo

Weakneesers took a break from the holiday shopping season for some action at Furaibo. How could we miss MustSeeTV Thursday? Happily, our DVRs were chugging away at home recording The Cosby Show and Cheers.

We left the digitalia at the office except for the requisite dig cams, and Mel toted her iTunes phone, so there was some MP3-age (AAC-age?) to be had. The orts were tasty as demonstrated here by Max “Skewer” Power,

and throughout the evening by an underground Hanpen eating contest between Eric and Jason (ah, but which?). What’s Hanpen? It’s a little to early in the morning to describe this fried wonder, but just remember the rule: one is great, two are good, three are deadly.

WeaKnees mascot Doem Lyte was in attendance, taking a break from his hectic social schedule.

You couldn’t slip an oyster past these guys.

And what was he drinking?

No Karaoke to follow.

Site Change

Shipping Updates

For years we’ve shipped most of our packages out via FedEx, with smaller ones going via United States Postal Service. Now, the big change is, for about the last six weeks we’ve shipped most of our boxes out UPS. Cables and remotes ordered alone with free shipping still generally go out USPS.

The change was primarily based on price. We were offered better rates with UPS, and consequently we’ve been able to reduce our express shipping charges to customers significantly. We still offer free ground shipping of everything we sell (that gets painful with the new 5LNB DirecTV dishes) but now our overnight, 2-day, and 3-day rates to customers are about 20% lower.

In addition, since UPS integrates the ground and express shipping charges, we’ve simplified our shipping process here. One truck arrives, and tracking numbers are more uniform. So far so good.

The other big shipping news here is that we’ve started shipping to Canada. TiVo recently supported using their TiVo DVRs in Canada, and we’ve had an increase in questions from potential customers in Canada. To be sure, there’s no rush of Canadians flooding us with orders, but there are some at this point. The two big drawbacks here are: 1) the rebate for TiVos only includes TiVos purchased for use in the US and 2) shipping isn’t cheap. We’ve been shipping all packages destined for Canada via the USPS, which works fairly well, and is far less expensive than using FedEx or UPS for international shipments.

Lets hope TiVo extends the rebate to our neighbors north of the border – why would Canadians be any less valuable as customers than US residents?

Customer Shipment

Customer Package

Sometimes, you’ve just got to tape these up well. Someone spent a lot of time and money here.

TiVo News

New TiVo Rebate is up

We all knew that TiVo wouldn’t abandon the rebate just at the start of the Christmas shopping season, and the new rebate is up, valid through 1/7/06. Same $150. Same details as before: you need to have service on the unit, there’s a penalty for cancelling service within a year, and it applies to new, non-DIRECTV models. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t extend to Canadian customers.

One question we get a lot at this time of year about rebates is how to get a rebate on a unit that’s a gift. It’s pretty easy to do. Just purchase the unit, pre-qualify for the rebate, and photocopy the UPC label on the box. Send in the photocopy and the sales receipt (for sales from us, just print the email). Then, when the recipient activates service, you’ll qualify for the cash back.