Ramblings of Heidi and Michael

Let me set the scene. My wife and I have owned a Topfield PVR for a number of years, so of course we recommended it to family and friends.

Unfortunately the unit my mother purchased suffered a hardware failure within the first 10 months or so. Believe it was a hard drive that died. So the unit was sent back via the retailer. It took over a month for a unit to come back, which I believe was a reworked one. The replacement unit seemed to work fine, or did so for a little while.

Unit ended up unable to get an signal locks. I factory reset the unit, and it came good (or so I thought). It would then lock on channels, but soon as I attempt to record anything it would immediately loose the ability to lock channels and the recorded program would have a filesize of zero. The only thing I can think of is that maybe 1 of the 2 tuners is having issues. Would explain that you can factory reset, scan, and lock a channel. In any case the unit seems to be fubar.

Not sure what sort of warranty is provided for reworked units, but my wife decided to give Topfield Australia a call, and was surprised just as I with the response. First off it took my over 21mins of being hold to speak with someone, who said only that it wouldn’t be much longer. At the 30 min mark someone finally come on and this is what they suggested;

Firmware update should fix it, or it could be the leads

What a complete generic response. Sounds like they were reading a scripted procedure. Of course neither suggestion is relevant in my opinion, as the unit has worked (and both suggestions would be suitable if the problem existed from day one).

I am shocked by the customer service, and even more shocked by the product having 2 serious issues. Of course now the unit is as useful as a brick or door stop.

Ironically enough our unit we own is at least 4 years old and still going strong. Although is due for replacement, had considered another Topfield unit, however in light of the above, we won’t be considering another Topfield unit based on this terrible customer support.