As you point out for 5 days (including 3 working days) till Dec 22nd ReplayTVs web site continued to maintain that ALL 5500 units included 3-year subscriptions. From web forum discussion groups, it appears that ReplayTVs customer service staff confirmed this.

The gracious thing for Replay to do is to accept those purchases prior to their 12/22 press release as being valid 3-year licensees. If they do this right and keep their customers happy, they have a very good chance that when the 3 years run out enough users will be accustomed to the ReplayTV interface that they will buy the next upgrade product from Replay/DNNA.

Failing that they are going to get huge amounts of negative publicity, more than a few small claims court lawsuits (sending a lawyer to defend themselves is going to burn more than the $300 subscription fees ReplayTV hopes to make), possibly getting the FTC and states attorneys general - Eliott Spitzer wannabes, are you listening??, consumer action lines, etc. etc. etc. Maybe Replay's PR firm has advised them that bad publicity is better than no publicity.

Everybody, if this happens to you PLEASE report them to the FTC, your states Attorney General's office, and the BBB. Even if you don't want to hassle with the thing and are just going to return it, file complaints with those 3 agencies first. You can file at FTC and BBB online, and many AG offices accept online complaints also. (CA Does)

Everybody, please, if your Replay gets de-activated, and they tell you on the phone they will only re-activate it if you pay them, or fax them a receipt showing a price of $400 or higher, take the time to file complaints with your state's Attorney Generals office.  Also file a complint with the CA state AG office since DNNA/ReplayTV is located in CA. Flooding the AG offices with complaints is the best solution we have to getting what Replay promised us.

Even if you are just going to return it, take a few minutes to file the complaints online first. If you bought it from CircuitCity, you have till 1/31/04 to return it under their holiday return policy.

A company changes its policy just days before Christmas, leaving some consumers with a big bill.

Until a week before Christmas, Replay TV sold its units with a three-year subscription included in the purchase price.

Wilson, of Delaware County says:

"I bought three units for gifts. When I tried to hook one up, I was told the company had a new pricing structure and I would have to pay $300 to make it work."

"I already sent one unit to someone. How embarrassing it is to tell him that I only sent one third of the gift, he has to pay the other two-thirds to use it at all."

Replay TV tells us they alerted retailers in the middle of December that they were changing the way they charged for subscriptions.

They say not all retailers told their customers about the change.

1. FTC: http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/consumer.htm
   Click on "File a Complaint"

2. Your State's Attorney General:
   http://www.naag.org/ag/full_ag_table.php <---Full List of all Attorney Generals...including the US's non-state territories.

3. The Better Business Bureau Online:
   http://www.bbb.org
   Business Complaints: http://complaints.bbb.org/Welcome.asp

and
4. Your local media companies (TV and newspapers...even news radio might do some good)...they are trying to shift the blame to the retailers so their PR stays clean...they aren't doing a very good job as their PR is turning sour very quickly. Getting the media to apply some pressure should help make up their minds as well.

I found this story through [H]ard|OCP. I do not own a ReplayTV or a Tivo unit (though my Step-brother/roomate does have a Tivo/DirecTV unit). All boxes marked with the 3 years free service should honor that promise. It shouldn't be the customer who has to try to get the situation straightened out...it should be Replay TV activating the 3 year service and charging the retailer the 3 year service charge if the unit was not supposed to have that sticker/documentation.

http://news.google.com/news?q=%27ReplayTV+customers+furious+over+service+charges%27&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N

The sociologists even have a term for it. They call it "stratification displacement." That's when you've been "Da Man" for so long that you no longer understand the effects your decisions have on your peons or customers. I suppose we could call it the "Bill Gates" syndrome, but that would be, ah, mean-spirited. Of course, he can always hug his 1 billion dollars in cash he's taken for himself if he's feeling blue. Wish I had that option... At least money does what you tell it.

Anyway, this is a golden opportunity for our entrepreneurial plantiff's bar (i.e. lawyers that sue for profit--like the Tobacco parasites who have stated, publicly, that they intend to sue every industry in the US with the $20B they're getting for the Tobacco "settlement").

This time, however, a class action is clearly warranted. From what we know, they only likely inference is that this company clearly planned this bait-and-switch strategy--figuring people would pony up the bucks or, what the he double hockey sticks, it's the retailer's problem. The class should also include the retailers screwed out of profits by having to give refunds thru no fault of their own. The evidence leaves any other alternative extremely improbable.

I am positive that, right now, as I write this, some schyster somewhere is drawing up a class action suit as we speak...for once, it'll be justified....until the customers get coupons and the lawyers millions.

Let's face it: one way or another the consumer always pays for everything just as, in his guise as taxpayer, he pays for everything from necessary items, cruise missiles to studying cow farts.

Whenever a purchased product (be it software or hardware) requires "permission" from the mother ship in order to be functional, this risk is incurred. It's like buying a car and having to get new keys from the dealer every month - sure, the system "works", but you lose a lot of control over your use of the product.

Things are bad enough with plain old product activation schemes, which may or may not be available later when needed (aka Quickbooks sunsetting products); add the ability of the company to use DRM to "rescind" previously granted permissions whenever they want and you've got a real monster to tame.

ReplayTV and its subscription service is akin to "software" (or hardware, depending on how you look at it) that relies on both product activation (you can buy it for $149 but it won't be useful until you activate it) and DRM (be sure to subscribe for $12.95 a month after that or it won't work) to ensure a constant revenue stream. Even purchasers of the $300 "lifetime" service could easily find out that their definition of "lifetime" may be quite different from that of D&M Holdings (could a "lifetime subscription" really mean just for the lifetime of the company?).

When the factory warranty ran out, I jumped on the AVS forum and pulled down instructions for self-upgrading it (I'm an IT pro, so it was trivial).

ReplayTV said "send it in for warranty replacement". I rushed it to their depot in Texas, only to discover that it sat there for almost ONE MONTH! When I called to inquire, it took them 20 minutes to locate info on my unit.

Then they said they didn't have a replacement to send! I said that all I needed was a new hard drive, not a replacement system. But apparently they only do replacement, not repair. The really bad part: They only replace when another unit "becomes available", and they had no prediction of when this might be.

They told me this with a straight face, like it's OK to tie their warranty service to the failure rate of the systems! Imagine a restaurant where your meal is ready, but you can't eat it until another diner finishes so the restaurant can recycle the tableware to you!

The replacement unit finally showed up. But unlike the system I returned, which had lifetime activation, the replacement had NO ACTIVATION! When I called in, the support person required that I provide the serial number of the original unit, which I no longer had in my possession!! None of the ReplayTV paperwork had this number (though I purchased it directly from them), but fortunately I'd written it in the manual when I received the original machine.

Keeping in mind that I bought the original unit directly from ReplayTV, and they provided the warranty replacement, what kind of nonsense is this? Why wouldn't they provide the service their own records indicate I should have? What would have happened if I did NOT have the number -- the most likely scenario? Why is it my responsibility to prove what they sold me?!? Failing this, I'd have a doorstop, apparently.