Return Policy - Am I Unreasonable?

[gplasky]

You notified support. It is not unreasonable for them to ask you to troubleshoot. That is what support does, If you read the return policy:

All returns for hardware must be pre-authorized by SageTV as described below. Your right to obtain a refund for hardware purchased from SageTV lasts only for a limited time. Returned hardware products must contain all components (CD, manuals, software carton, etc.) that were included in the original shipment. No credit will be issued for incomplete or non-SageTV product returns. All returns must be postmarked to SageTV within 30 days after the date SageTV originally shipped the product. All hardware returns must have a Return Merchandise Authorization number (RMA) clearly displayed on the outside of the return package. To receive your RMA for hardware refunds, please send an e-mail to orders@sagetv.com . Shipping and handling charges will not be refunded and a 10% restocking charge will be applied. Any returns requested for hardware purchased in a bundle will be credited less the retail cost of the applicable software purchased in that bundle.

You needed to follow the instructions and send an email to orders at sagetv dot com. And you only have 30 days to do that. And that 30 days includes all the time it takes to fill out the form and return it to them if you can't do it via email

When making your request for an RMA#, please provide SageTV with your e-mail address if you can receive and print a document in Adobe Acrobat® (or ".pdf") format. If you are not able to receive the form by e-mail in a .pdf format, you must also provide us with a fax number or mailing address to receive the form. Remember, no matter how you choose to receive and/or return the form, you are still responsible for meeting the limited time rule discussed above. You must fill out any missing information on the Affidavit of Software Destruction, sign and date the Affidavit, and return it to SageTV as instructed on the form.

Usually a request to support means you are trying to fix something. It took me a couple of weeks to troubleshoot an issue that didn't occur all the time. Found out the problem was a malfunctioning NIC card. Not their issue but mine. Not saying your issue is caused by you. But not knowing what beta release of software or firmware it was malfunctioning on it may be worth while to get it up to the latest firmware and the release version and plug it in place where you have a fully functioning HD300 and see if it happens again. And if you do take the 5 minutes it takes to enable debug on the server and the HD300. I'm pretty sure you're past the 30 day limit so you may as well get it fixed.

Gerry

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Particularly unless Sage is going to add telephone support, I really don't think Sage can justifiably expect all customers to do some of the things they've had me do. I think its easier now, but it used to be a very involved process to get logs off the extenders.

Well, this thread isn't about you. j/k Seriously, though, they asked the OP to do some troubleshooting. The fact that he can't reliably reproduce the issue makes it sound like there are variables involved which may not be the hardware itself. We don't know what he was asked to do, so I can't say what degree of support they're asking of him. If they're having him pull apart the unit and check voltages on test points, then I'd agree their expectations are a bit high. But, changing some settings, creating some log files, recording or playing back shows via different software, perhaps trying different cables, if available, would all seem reasonable to me.

If I told Dell that swapping out a memory module SOMETIMES fixed an issue, they wouldn't just send me another module. They'd have me do some other things. People are referencing things which are relatively easy to determine if they're faulty, except maybe the Tivo reference. Tivo has tech support? I never tried during my ownership years. However, I do know that when I bought a defective DirecTV HD receiver at Best Buy, they would NOT allow me to return it. I had to wait for a technician to arrive and troubleshoot it the following week, while I took a day off of work waiting for them to show up.

[Chriscic]

I have to side a little with the OP here; he's been a great Sage customer, and not everyone has the time to futz around everything something goes wrong.

Having said that, while I think it would have been nice of Sage to just swap out the unit, many points made here are valid. So, while I somewhat side with OP, I don't think this is a terrible injustice, so OP probably justs need to suck it up and send a few logs to Sage.... sometimes men (and companies) of good conscience disagree.

[Tiki]

From what was posted, it appears to me that what Sage is doing is in line with industry standards. It is not unreasonable. Sure there are some companies that go above and beyond and offer no questions asked exchanges, but they are the exception and not the norm.

As a consumer, when I have a problem I would be happier with a company that takes things back no questions asked, but not every company can afford to do that. And the fact that Sage doesn't do that doesn't equate to bad service.

I can tell you that I recently had some problems with a DELL laptop that was still under warranty. One of the memory modules started to flake out causing all sorts of random problems for about a week, and then the laptop just refused to boot. I ran a memtest and identified the bad RAM. Removing the bad module allowed the laptop to run. When I called DELL and explained all this, they still made me go trough several troubleshooting steps (including swapping ram chips from slot to slot). After several hours on the phone, they still refused to send out a new RAM module - instead they asked me to ship the whole laptop back so they can replace the motherboard and RAM. They expect the repair to take 1-2 weeks plus shipping time. So, even "big" companies like DELL aren't willing to exchange things no questions asked. I've had much worse experiences with other consumer electronics companies (like TomTom).

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Tiki

So, even "big" companies like DELL aren't willing to exchange things no questions asked.

Sure. Of course they're not going to replace something with no questions asked. But, I bet if you would have called up saying your computer wouldn't boot, and resisted attempts to troubleshoot things, they would have let you send it in for support. They wouldn't make you troubleshoot the problem much, as long as you were willing to send it in.

And that's also what Sage was apparently willing to do too. I think the OP was just upset Sage wouldn't agree to ship out a new unit without checking the old one first.

[nick_l]

Personally, I have to say that I side mostly with the OP.

Several people have posted that it is industry standard practice to have the customer go through troubleshooting processes. That speaks to my point. Sage is NOT an "industry standard" company. There are not thousands of faceless drones reading troubleshooting scripts, there is George (and a few others). Sage is a small time, niche player. In my opinion, they live and die on customer service. One bad online review could have the potential to be far more expensive than swapping out a potentially defective HD300.

I'm not suggesting that Sage is specifically wrong, nor should they bow to every unreasonable request, but it should be painfully easy for any customer service person to see that the OP's purchase history puts him in the category of informed user and valuable repeat customer. I think it should be job one NOT to piss off your good, steady paying, repeat customers.

Sage is a great company, I don't think it should aspire to the customer service of merely average companies.

[megaboz]

Call me crazy, but isn't replacing the unit and being unable to reproduce, "Trouble Shooting"?

I agree a reasonable amount of due diligence should be applied to resolve the issue, but if swapping an entire unit with the exact same model isn't enough, then what is?

The OP bought a product it isn't performing, replaced it with another, it works, just wants another to replace the defective unit, what's the issue?

Small company or not, that shouldn't matter for customer service. I have a computer that once in a blue moon (I mean every 6 months or so) wil not boot unless I pull the power cord first. How long would you expect me to debug that for a company?

A small company will not grow without good/happy customers. As for all the Dell/Sony/etc references, not exactly the same thing. Half the people who work for those companies couldn't tie their shoes if it wasn't for velcro.

[pjpjpjpj]

Without getting into the psychoanalytical aspects of whether they should replace it or not, heffneil, have you tried the "broken" HD300 again? I read through your posts and it appears (thought not really said clearly) that it started acting funny and you unplugged it and took it out of the system. Have you tried it again? I found - especially during the beta period - that I had some problems with the HD300 and they were mostly resolved by hard rebooting (unplugging, plugging back in). Thankfully I have not seen any issues since the whole thing went "official".

Maybe you tried this, if so, nevermind. I just read through this thread and there was no indication, and I would hate to think that this big socio-economic debate was spawned from something that could have been resolved by a reboot.

You know... far be it from Sage users to overthink things.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by megaboz

Call me crazy, but isn't replacing the unit and being unable to reproduce, "Trouble Shooting"?

I agree a reasonable amount of due diligence should be applied to resolve the issue, but if swapping an entire unit with the exact same model isn't enough, then what is?

No, see it isn't in the case of the extenders. As I stated, each device is setup separately and the properties files are stored on the server. So if for some reason the user setup their Extender incorrectly, then it wouldn't function as expected and swapping out extenders wouldn't prove whether the user setup the original one incorrectly.

A simple log file would show Sage all the setup settings and thus could easily prove whether it was the user or the device at fault.

Edit: And when I mentioned this the OP basically stated "I know what I am doing".... but didn't want to prove it. That's unreasonable.

[megaboz]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

No, see it isn't in the case of the extenders. As I stated, each device is setup separately and the properties files are stored on the server. So if for some reason the user setup their Extender incorrectly, then it wouldn't function as expected and swapping out extenders wouldn't prove whether the user setup the original one incorrectly.

A simple log file would show Sage all the setup settings and thus could easily prove whether it was the user or the device at fault.

Edit: And when I mentioned this the OP basically stated "I know what I am doing".... but didn't want to prove it. That's unreasonable.

A simple copy of the settings I don't think is unrealistic, but trying to debug something that happens now and again can be a bit trying. I know because I have been doing that for several months because of lockups.

[Grant.Edwards]

Originally Posted by heffneil

If you buy a tivo from the store and it doesn't function properly you
plop it back in the box return it to bestbuy and get another one. Why
is this any different?

Seriously?

You don't know how SageTV LLC and Best Buy, Inc. are different?

--
Grant

[stanger89]

FWIW, I was just going to relate a recent experience that makes me (I think) understand the OPs frustration.

I recently bought a new motherboard for my new unRAID box. A Supermicro X7SPA. It's fully integrated, everything but RAM. I did my due diligence and purchase RAM that was recommended as compatible on both the unRAID forums and the Kingston compatibility list.

So imagine my frustration when my new mobo won't post or do anything but a solitary beep. The troubleshooting in the manual didn't help. I contacted Supermicro support and was in effect told I wasn't using RAM from their compatibility list, so "Go pound sand".

They wouldn't RMA it until I purchased ram specifically off their compatibility list.

Now at this point I'm quite frustrated, I just want it to work. I've built plenty of computers, I know what I'm doing. I tried ram in both slots, removed, reinserted it....

You know what? I hadn't inserted it all the way. It was a DDR2 SODIMM and I had to push it a lot farther than I'd done. Suffice to say it was quite embarrassing I'd make such a silly mistake.

So while I completely understand the OP's frustration, I agree with most here that Sage is completely justified in asking for some debug logs. Especially if you connected support (and not orders).

Originally Posted by nick_l

Several people have posted that it is industry standard practice to have the customer go through troubleshooting processes. That speaks to my point. Sage is NOT an "industry standard" company. There are not thousands of faceless drones reading troubleshooting scripts, there is George (and a few others). Sage is a small time, niche player. In my opinion, they live and die on customer service. One bad online review could have the potential to be far more expensive than swapping out a potentially defective HD300.

They also live and die by any debugging info they can get their hands on. They have (I'm sure) a very limited testing budget/resources, so they need to get as much info from wherever they can.

I'm not suggesting that Sage is specifically wrong, nor should they bow to every unreasonable request, but it should be painfully easy for any customer service person to see that the OP's purchase history puts him in the category of informed user and valuable repeat customer. I think it should be job one NOT to piss off your good, steady paying, repeat customers.

FWIW, I'm sure if the OP had emailed orders@ first thing when he found the issue and asked for a refund, and not let it stew for a couple months, Sage would have been quite accommodating.

Sage is a great company, I don't think it should aspire to the customer service of merely average companies.

But at the same time they can't be like Seagate who just blindly replaces every "bad" drive that's reported.

Originally Posted by megaboz

I agree a reasonable amount of due diligence should be applied to resolve the issue, but if swapping an entire unit with the exact same model isn't enough, then what is?

I don't see the issue, turn on debug logging, and use it until the issue happens again, and reply with the log. It shouldn't take any more time than normal use.

The OP bought a product it isn't performing, replaced it with another, it works, just wants another to replace the defective unit, what's the issue?

That it's not a clearly "DOA" case. It's part of a system, the OP's issues could be caused by the server, not the box (for example).

[rgroves]

I think the OP is being somewhat unreasonable, but I can also feel his frustration. I recently had issues with my HD300 not working. It would work fine for recorded SDTV and HDTV, and played DVD's without any issues, but if I tried to play back a Blu-ray - Nothing but stuttering, choppy video, and almost no audio.

I did my own troubleshooting and tried the unit on different TV's, network connections, network cables, different outputs.... everything. The problem only showed up on 1 TV, no matter what cable or connection I used on that TV... I had the problem. I finally noticed that the link light on the HD300 was not lit solid, only blinking. even though I reconnected the network cable probably 12 times, I reconnected it one more time and BINGO... a solid connection light, and the Blu-ray started playing perfectly.


I just don't understand WHY the OP is soooo unwilling to troubleshoot the problem. What harm is it going to do to you to turn on the debugging, and try it? If it doesn't mess up, then give it a day and try it again. He obviously has HD200's in place, and is replacing them with HD300's... Soooo, if the testing while in debugging mode doesn't mess up, then reconnect the HD200 and try it again another day. You are out a whopping 10-15 minutes...

Sorry to sound insensitive... but.... If the OP's time is soooooo tight, then where did he get the time to swap out all the HD200's in the first place??? What about writing all the posts on this thread??? In the time to read and respond to messages on here, he could've turned on debugging and tried to reproduce the issue for tech support !!

[megaboz]

Sadly everyone, the OP just asked if he sounded reasonable. Beating on him was not he was after.

My opinion, somewhat unreasonable.

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by rgroves

I just don't understand WHY the OP is soooo unwilling to troubleshoot the problem. What harm is it going to do to you to turn on the debugging, and try it? If it doesn't mess up, then give it a day and try it again. He obviously has HD200's in place, and is replacing them with HD300's... Soooo, if the testing while in debugging mode doesn't mess up, then reconnect the HD200 and try it again another day. You are out a whopping 10-15 minutes...

Having had 1 x HD100 that had intermittent problems, I can tell you it was a pain in the butt to get a log, and the device was never replaced by Sage. I recently needed to use it, and the problem is still there. Had Sage offered me the opportunity to return it and let them do it, and I would be out of the device for weeks, I actually would have been okay with that. the reason is because I know the defect was in the product, not my setup since the problem continued from one house to the next, tv to tv, and a couple different two different rebuilds of Sage.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by mistergq

Having had 1 x HD100 that had intermittent problems, I can tell you it was a pain in the butt to get a log, and the device was never replaced by Sage. I recently needed to use it, and the problem is still there. Had Sage offered me the opportunity to return it and let them do it, and I would be out of the device for weeks, I actually would have been okay with that. the reason is because I know the defect was in the product, not my setup since the problem continued from one house to the next, tv to tv, and a couple different two different rebuilds of Sage.

I agree with you. It's far too difficult to get logs off the extenders to expect everyone to do it. I thought Sage made it easier to get logs off the extenders, but after checking the FAQ that doesn't appear to be true. They really need to create a utility that collects logs from the server and the extenders. And I think they should just always have logging turned on. Turning on logging with the default settings doesn't seem to impact performance. The logs get huge if you turn on the media debugging flag (or whatever its called) in the properties file, but they rarely have you do that.

[gplasky]

If you're on a Windows network all you need to do after logging is enabled is go into Network Places, find the HD200 or HD300 and double click on it. You'll see some folders exposed and one of them contains the log. Just copy it from there. You need to have the Windows File Server option enabled on the extenders. (HD100 needs to be telnetted to.)

Gerry

[reggie14]

Forgetting about the hd100 log collection process, which was/is just crazy, have you ever had to go to that much effort to get logs out of any other consumer-grade product?

I've certainly been asked for logs. Sometimes it's just been a matter of saving the log to a file, and sometimes the company has given me a tool to run that collects everything automatically. I really don't see why that wouldn't work here. Turn on logging by default, turn on the extender shares by default ( its not like its a security issue given root doesn't have a password), and create a utility that collects the system information, the sage.properties file, the server log, and scans for any extenders turned on and gets logs from those.

[nspindel]

I don't think Sage is being unreasonable here at all. And I find it puzzling that the OP is basically saying that he's too busy to be bothered collecting debug information to attach to an email to Sage, but has enough time to post about it on this thread, read people's responses, and reply multiple times. Surely the OP could have taken less time out of his busy schedule and simply gathered and sent Sage the debug details they are asking for.

These are complex systems, with lots of independent parts, any one of which could be the culprit, even though you'd swear that you've done all the a/b testing and diagnosis necessary to come to the conclusion that a particular part was definitely the problem.

Sage is no different from other companies offering products like this. Take SiliconDust for example, who manufacture the HDHomeRun. When I first got the HDHR, it was skipping like crazy, even though I was running a quad core server with SATA drives on a gigabit network, and everything was working perfectly except the HDHomeRun. I contacted SiliconDust customer support, expecting them to just swap the unit for another one. Like we're discussing here, SiliconDust had me enable debug logging, which automatically ships the logs to them for evaluation (neat trick, saves you from having to collect and email the logs). They diagnosed the logs, and came to the definitive conclusion that my router was dropping network packets. I found that impossible to believe - it was a relatively new, current spec Linksys gigabit router, and everything else on my network was working perfectly. Well guess what..... I swapped the router out for a DLink gigabit, and voila, HDHomeRun was perfect. That was a good learning experience, and was also the last time I bought a Linksys product.

Just do as they're asking, spend the 15 minutes to get the logs together, and if there's really anything wrong with the unit, they'll exchange it. But you might be surprised to learn that it's something you never even considered.