Share Your Ideas with Verizon

[#1]

I saw an earlier post about being able to purchase VZ Branded (or Retail) Equipment as the cost of renting the boxes scales very high after a couple of years.

One of the benefits of only offering VZ Equipment is that VZ gets to have more control over how the information is presented to the user (think of Apples model with many of their devices).  I certainly understand wanting to offer the most amount of options by using only VZ Equipment however the point of escalating costs is very valid.

How about an option to trade in your older equipment after 2 years (similar to VZ Wireless).  Many customers are offered 1 or 2 years contracts to lock into FIOS Service.  Hard Drive sizes increase in new boxes and that is a common complaint from what I have found that there is limited storage space.  Most of the other limitations of the DVRs appear to be resolved with IMG 1.9 coming later.  How about after 2 years you can get the newest, fanciest Motorola/Cisco new larger hard drive, faster innards, etc.?  Call Customer Service and then send you a new one, you toss the old one in the same box and send it back.

It would be more hassle and inventory to control but you would also be phasing out older stuff and able to EOL it from VZ Supported Products and giving the FIOS crowd the newer stuff.  VZ already offers this to cell customers.

Guessing that 2 years is sufficient time for notable product enhancements in the equipment.

Alternate suggestion - if there is no trade up program, then discount the rent rates for equipment that has been in house for 2 years.  As it stands, customers with older product are currently paying the same fees as those with new fancy boxes that have better internals.  That does seem like a discrepancy.

Hope you find this a valid suggestion.

[#2]

Both approaches are interesting comments... have to say something I had not considered.

But 2 years is definitely too short of time... the set tops and DVR's are not subsidized by content services, like mobile phones are subsidized by your purchase of voice, messaging and Internet access services. The rental fee has to cover the cost of the equipment.

VZW would charge $100 - $200 for the "newest" when you do your new 2 every 2... would that fly? You could upgrade every 2-4 years for an incremental fee (maybe for even under $100 upgrade fee) and continue the monthly rental.

[#3]

There are some differences though between a VZ Wireless cell phone contract and VZ FIOS boxes.  When you purchase a subsidized phone, you own the phone.  VZ FIOS only rents their boxes.  If I cancel service VZ FIOS gets the boxes back to use as replacements, refurbs, etc.  I am free to resell a VZ Locked cell phone, donate it, etc.  I can also upgrade the cell phone as I see fit while I am using it.  I imagine if I bedazzled a VZ FIOS Box, try to upgrade its innards, etc. I will probably owe VZ a lot of money to replace the rented box I messed with.

Rental Fees only cover the time it is my house being used so I am not sure there is really any cost to cover since it is a usuage fee required to access certain services from VZ FIOS.  I will sidebar here to bring up a related point -there are currently 2 tiers of rentals for HDDVRs - Multi Room for $20 and Stand Alone for $15 (at least in Virginia).  One side question is - will that change with the reported upcoming IMG 1.9 feature to allow HD DVRs to share their content among each other?

Also, $100 might be too steep for a trade up.  Maybe $50 or just re-lock in for another year or 2 of service and you can have all the upgraded stuff.  A Technology Refresh for 2 more years.  Consider that Tivo offers their Premiere HD box for approx $200 (amazon) with a similar fee to renting FIOS boxes for monthly service + cable card rental and you own that box.  I think the math ends up with a Tivo being slightly better then renting a VZ FIOS HD DVR around the 2.5 year mark.  I did the math a little while ago but do not recall the exact switchover.  That would be partially negated with an upgrade option from VZ FIOS branded box.  There is the VOD component in there as well wich adds value over Tivo.  Many of the other benefits of Tivo will be negated in an upcoming IMG 1.9 upgrade from what I have read and seen from an earlier preview VZ did.

The only other option I am familiar with is the DirecTV box which you pay $100 (or $200) for HD DVR lease fee but then the monthly rate on it is lower ($5/ box + slightly more for HD, DVR, and MultiRoom Features).

How many times in the 5 years of FIOS Service has VZ offered a newer better HD DVR?  Multiple revs of Motorolas and in some markets a Cisco branded box is showing up, correct?  VZ FIOS does get new better equipment in on a somewhat regular basis from what I have seen.  I think given the option to cough up $50 every 2-3 years or just re-lock into a contract to get your hands on that would probably be worth it.  VZ FIOS offers a lot of programming so HD DVRs fill up pretty fast, especially the older ones.  You can partially mitigate this with an external drive but that is still in development.

Hope this suggestion is still considered valid and worth looking into.

Thanks.

[#4]

I wouldn't mind paying 100 bucks for a box as long as there was a warranty.  However, why would Verizon do that, when they can continue to do what they have been doing and make more money that way?  I have paid about 1800.00 for 3 HD/DVR boxes over the past 4 years.  I would have loved to been able to purchase them for 100-200 when I started my service.  

[#5]

ouch $1800 for 3 HD DVRs? Yet people say I am crazy when I have multiple lifetime TiVos. Including CC fees I am still well under the $1800 for my TiVos and definitely won't be near $1800 after 4 years.

[#6]

I dumped DTV when they said I had to pay for a DVR they owned($599). As soon as FiOS TV was available I ran after it as fast as I could, and the $12.95 a month, at that time for a HDDVR was a steal. Regardless of the drive size. Remember 5 years ago there was not that much HD content. So I like the idea of available upgrades for those who want to pay a little extra for them, but to force it as a policy would in my opinion be a big PR problem. I believe at some point having an exchange program would be a good idea, but as mentioned the cost has to be covered somewhere. The rental fee I guess does not just cover the DVR but also the service which contradicts what was said at the start, about not having to pay extra for HD, when DTV charged $10 a month extra for HD. But the rental covers overall service for that box as all providers do, and not HD. 24 x $19.95 a month is not even $500. So Joe is correct in being fair and covering cost. So where should the line be drawn? 3 years?

[#7]

Folks, there might be a slight case of forgotten info.  If you own vs rent, if it breaks you have to buy new.  The idea of an upgrade for slight improvements is OK, but those advances are downloaded to the boxes on a regular basis.  I am a disabled FIOS tech.  Every day VZ sends commands to the various boxes and uploads pay per view events.  If you were to watch your tv for a constant 24 hrs, you would experience a reset of the box when this communication happens.  Customer service gets calls if, for some reason it happens during the day when people are usually watching tv. 

I do think that when a major inprovement takes place, ex. bigger DVR storage, VZ should make the new boxes available to current DVR subscribers, at no cost.  Those boxes will eventually have to be upgraded.  Upgrade costs, for those of us that don't currently have DVR boxes, would have to pay for upgrade, typically the new monthly rental fee, which is pretty much the way it is now,  The only difference is that VZ does not notify anyone, but the installers.

[#8]

$100 is a great place to start.  I would pay $200 if the next DVR had the following:

- 1 terabyte internal drive. They are $50.  Come on, did you buy 25 million 160GB drives or what?  I work in a datacenter all day - let me put one in if you won't.  

- 1 hour buffers for each tuner that can be paused independently of each other.

--- When the buffer is full the tuner starts playback from the oldest moment and does not jump to LIVE.

--- A SWAP button is added that allows flipping back and forth between tuners.

- 3 or more tuners

--- unfortunately, studios fight over the same day to show their best shows instead of each network "owning" a night of the week.  We need more tuners, please!

- Recording conflict resolution rules

--- Currently, if there is a recording conflict, you are not asked to resolve it, you simply lose a show.  Give us the option to skip the show less important at that time AND schedule the skipped episode for a later playing if one is available.

IE... a popular cable show comes on at 9PM and repeats at 1AM.  i skip the 9PM airing and it automatically schedules the 1AM airing to record instead.

- Add an ALL SUBSCRIBED filtered channel listing.  

I think that would cover me for now.  

While we are at it:

PLEASE CARRY ENTIRE SEASONS of the current year of at least the top 25 shows on TV on VOD, not just THE EVENT.  if you did, then we wouldn't need 1TB internal drives and 5TB of external drives to record shows we save until the summer to watch.  I can't watch tv 8 hours a day but I'd like to see more than I have time for.  So,  I watch 2 or 3 first run and record 6 or 7 more to watch when tv is dead air during the summer months.

EVEN BETTER:  Let us pick the shows we want YOU to have all the current season's episodes for on VOD - I would pay an extra fee just for that.  No crashed hard drives, no eSata gear all over the place, just guaranteed available episodes of what I want to watch.  You can even sell my preferences to whomever, just make THAT happen.

Thanks!

[#9]

At this point I believe with current prices the line is 4 years... to make it shorter the monthly fee would have to be higher.

[#10]

Hey Joe. Veteran companies like Time Warner Cable offer free upgrades for their equipment whenever you like. You can walk into their shops and swap one out anytime. I used to do this every year for my dvrs so I get more storage. If you guys want to compete with the big dogs then start acting like them and don't start these new ridiculous policies like charging to swap out a cable box.