One of my co-workers recently received an email from TiVo about her billing, and she asked me about it as the resident ‘TiVo expert’:
From: CustomerCare@tivo.com
Date: Jul 27, 2007 2:14 PM
Subject: Important message regarding your monthly billingDear Valued TiVo Customer,
It has come to our attention that you have not been billed for one or more months of your TiVo service. After your gift subscription was used in full, the credit card you provided when you activated your DVR, should have been billed for your ongoing service. Due to a system error however, this did not happen. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working quickly to fix this issue. Within the next ten days, you should see a charge on your credit card for the service you have received since your gift subscription expired.
To see a detailed view of the charges on your account once the appropriate changes have been made, please visit www.tivo.com/manage.
Thank you for being a loyal TiVo Subscriber.
Sincerely,
The TiVo team
At the time I hadn’t heard anything about this, so I advised her to contact TiVo to make sure this wasn’t a mistake. She did, and TiVo told her that this affected ‘thousands’ of customers. It seems to be related to gift subscriptions. Apparently they gave people an extra month ‘free’ between the end of a gift subscription and the start of monthly billing. In the case of my co-worker, she started with a 3-month gift but she received the 4th month free before billing commenced. I went looking and found this thread on TiVoCommunity.com from other users who received the same email.
So, if you received that email and were wondering what it was about, now you know. If you don’t think it applies to you, I recommend contacting TiVo’s customer support.
