Too much, too late

I feel like a traitor.
Today, I cancelled my TiVo service after umpty-up years. And I really felt bad for the nice lady who cancelled it for me. She tried to sell me on the new Series 3 by extolling its features — I pointed out to her that I was such a longtime customer that she didn’t need to sell me on it; that it was the high price that scared me off. She offered to reduce my monthly fee by about half; I told her that $6 a month for a single-tuner, standard-def TiVo that only received the first 60 channels of my cable was not much of a deal compared to a dual-tuner, high-def DVR from the cable company for only $9.95 per month.
I felt bad as I complained about the recent problems with the TiVo software, problems that made my box move like molasses and display strange behaviors.
But that didn’t stop me from dumping TiVo for the huge, evil Comcast.
This is like the day I dumped Dish Network in favor of Comcast. The cable company monopoly gives it the ability to deliver things like DVRs cheaper than other companies (although the higher cable rates make up for it).
In the end, customers like me–who start out wanting to support smaller more innovative companies–wind up being pragmatic. Dish Network makes it complicated and expensive to outfit my house with HD DVRs, Comcast will let me have as many as I want for $9.95 each. TiVo makes it expensive to purchase a DVR then charges a high monthly fee on top of the cable company charges; Comcast doesn’t make me buy the box and charges less per month.
It used to be that one of the main differentiating factors between all these companies was customer service. When I first got Dish — a month after it initially launched — the customer service was excellent, and continued that way for years. But then they started to grow exponentially, and their service deteriorated so badly that it was no better than the cable company.
I supported them when they were small, and they repaid my loyalty with nothing at all. Not even a thank you note, a discount, or a box upgrade. Just a coupon for a free pay-per-view movie, after 10 years.
Same with TiVo. I waited for years for features that they never got around to making Mac compatible… waited years for an HD version of the box… I spent more than $1000 on service fees… and nothing.
Heck, even Comcast sent me coupons for 2 free months of service after only six months of being a customer.
The moral of this story: there’s a limit to loyalty when the price goes up. And a little customer appreciation goes a very long way towards cementing that loyalty.