posted September 8, 2009 8:07 AM PDT

Help me understand the expectations here

People send us DVRs for repair. We state on our website that this takes about two weeks from the day we receive it. So why am I constantly getting questions like the following within one to two days of receiving the units?:

"I haven't heard anything lately?  What is the status on my DVR?"

"I was wondering if you could give me an update on my repair order"

"Just curious on the repair/upgrade status of  my TIVO unit"

"Hello, I was just inquiring about the status of my series 1 DVR that I sent for repair / upgrade."

"Just wanted to see what the status of my repair was and when I should expect it to be delivered."

and on and on... Seriously, what is so hard to understand about "may take up to one to two business weeks?" And what the fuck is a status update? It's either fixed or not. 90% of that time is wait time, because there's a queue of machines. I don't work on one just a little bit, and then go work on something else. I work on them one or two at a time in the order that I receive them. So it puts me in a little bit of a weird spot when they ask what the "status" is, because 9 times out of 10, the status is that the unit is still sitting in it's box because I'm working on another one that showed up before it. But you can't say that, because people freak out. "You mean you haven't even looked at it yet?!?"

So invariably I always say "I'm still working on the unit, but I will let you know when it is ready to ship."

But then if they don't hear from me in another day or two, they'll ask again. Never mind that I told them that I would contact them when it's ready.

I also occasionally get complaints from people because they can't track the status of their repair online and find out what's happening to their machine at that exact moment. Well, what is there to track? You know when we receive it because you get an email. And you know when we're done because you'll get another email at that time. So the assumption should be, at any point between those two events, your unit is either sitting in a box waiting to get fixed, or it's on my counter actually getting fixed.

I know people get anxious about TV and shit, but seriously...

FUCKKJDFAHK I just got a phone call from a customer asking about his unit AS I WAS WRITING THIS

fuck this shit. I guess I should spend my time actually repairing units instead of complaining about impatient customers WHO HAVE ALREADY BEEN FUCKING TOLD HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE

last updated September 8, 2009 8:26 AM PDT