By If you thought things couldn’t get any worse in Logitech’s admittedly-failed Google TV experiment, guess again. As they’re trying to push as many Logitech Revue units out of the door as they can to make up for their losses this holiday season, consumers who purchase the Google TV box may not even be able to use them.
Many new owners are reporting that setup fails on step seven where you’re asked to accept their EULA. There’s no word yet on when a possible fix or workaround may be achieved.
It really is inconvenient for Logitech who probably sold a lot more of these things at its heavily discounted price this holiday season than the first few months of its existence. With this issue, many people will be urged to return it because, well, a $100 paper weight just isn’t fun. I’d rather take a lump of coal in my stocking – at least I can grill with it. [via GTVSource]
Hi All-
I can assure you this issue is real as I have experienced this first hand and there are dozens if not hundreds in the same situation (http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Revue/Setup-Authentication-Error/td-p/755824). I’ve had one of these ‘corrupt firmware’ boxes confirmed by the Product Management team at Logitech.
I purchased my ‘New’ Revue from Amazon on and got it on December 19th. As other posters have stated I too was stuck on accepting the EULA (setup step 7 of 11) . Since I was one of the first customers to detect this problem, Logitech reached out to me since they were not able to reproduce the issue on their side. I spent a hours via phone, Skype, and email troubleshooting this issue with them running scripts, extracting logs from my Revue box pointed to a non-production instance on their end so they could enable debugging to reproduce the behavior. I think I exceeded my end as the customer. The conclusion as stated in this article was ‘corrupt firmware’ that did not impact all Revue boxes, but a subset that the customer support team can decipher if you contact them. OK, no problem, bad box, now let’s get this cleared up and move forward.
So on to the support route we go. The customer service reps on the forums point you to live chat support (which you cannot get since you didn’t accept the EULA) and a phone number to call so you may start the RMA process. Unfortunately, they are not properly staffed (understandable around the holidays I guess). This results into long wait times, but that’s not all, there is more. Once you call you are put on hold for exactly 47 minutes and 37 seconds and then the automated CRM system hangs up on you, so if you are not lucky enough to get through you are hung up on and put to the back of the queue. I tried this 6 times before I got someone and I can tell you getting hung up 5 times after waiting 47 min 37 seconds each is frustrating (and admittedly stupid). They run through 1st level support troubleshooting and then escalate.
You are then contacted a few days later to gather your device information and told to follow the RMA process. They said it will take two weeks, so I’m going to be without my Revue for a total of 24+ days (already been eight days, plus two more days till I get he shipping label, then fourteen more days till I get the ‘refurbished’ replacement Revue…sold $20 cheaper online in exchange for my new device sold at $99). I politely asked if I could get one sooner for my trouble and they refused and quoted me their RMA policy several times. Very poor customer service Logitech, very poor.
I think most of us have patience for mistakes, but when those mistakes are compounded when a company refuses to own up to it (when they have knowledge of a problem) and deviate from ‘standard policy’ (that continues to put the customer out) to make up for the mistake is very poor customer service.
This brings me to the point of sharing my story. Big companies need to be held accountable when they make mistakes like you and I. My only recourse in this was to share my story with you in the hopes that that if you consider buying Logitech products in the future it might give you pause as you might keep this story in mind. The only way some big companies listen is if you vote with your wallet.
On a brighter note, I hear many are happy with their Sony Gtv Blue-Ray players.
Thanks for reading my first post.
If I would you I would send this story to the Consumerist. You might be surprised what happens.
Thank you both, I’ve shared my story with the Consumerist.
I’ve had luck filing a complaint with my states department of agriculture division of consumer services. Companies tend to fix things very quickly once a TRUE complaint is filed. Your story is most certainly worthy of a complaint.
Maybe this was their attempt at making people hate Google TV as revenge for poor sales :P
Get this Logitech Revue with Google TV from Amazon, if you missed it: http://www.amazon.com/mn/search/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=261211-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=logitech%20revue&url=search-alias%3Delectronics&sprefix=Logitech%20Revue
A factory reset of the device will solve this.
@jcopernicus:disqus Unfortunately the factory reset will not fix the units affected by the the corrupt firmware issue. Maybe you were speaking of the the update for @Paleogirl2003:disqus , this has been confirmed by the Engineers and Product Management at Logitech.
Nope, I bought a refurbished Revue, turned it on and it downloaded the 3.1 update. I couldn’t get past the EULA on step 7. Looked around random forums, gave up. Some people had luck by just spamming the retry button. Opted to do a factory reset (pressing the sync button on the back for 25+ seconds). Then I got through step 7 without a problem.
@jcopernicus:disqus I’ve been on that forum cited above since 12/19 the method you suggest doesn’t work for all boxes impacted. I tried that method on my Revue box last week many times after reading similar information (and many other suggested troubleshooting techniques by the Logitech level II support), I’ve heard of it working for some, but not all…I think they have varying levels of issues here. It didn’t work in my case. I’m glad your box wasn’t AS impacted as mine. Maybe I should have gotten a refurb!
I was setting up my sister’s new revue and it was installing updates, and now it is stuck on the dreaded white triangle screen
we already tried the reset button, unplugging power, and ctrl alt del to no avail
any tips?
I’ve had that problem before and gotten past it, usually is because you don’t have an internet connection, or the servers are down at logitech, in the past at night they would shut them down and during the day it would work fine
I got mine from Amazon on the 21st, and all went well. Hope you guys that have borked ones get replacements soon.
Sorry the wanna be honeycomb is ugly as a dog turd. Connecting my Thrive to the TV is a much much better experience.
Almost pulled the trigger for a Christmas gift for my son but after seeing YouTube videos of the honeycomb update and how BUTT ASS ugly it is I thankfully decided against it.
It’s obvious Google isn’t giving this mess any priority.
You look at what Microsoft is doing and it’s a work of art compared to dog turd Google TV UI
This in my opinion has nothing to do with firmware. Service bozo that claimed this went for vacation and logitech left us to one completely incompetent dude in charge who could only ask you to re-power everything and replace your hdmi cables. My new box could ran browser and I could see other sites, but cannot finish their silly setup that blocks Revue until you are authenticated on their failed server. I can’t understand why this company blocks this box from working unless I finish registration with them — I have no other business with logitech outside of buying this half baked box. It seems like logitech attorneys that wants us to sign registration in their database in real time took over engineering and marketing in this company.
Since browser does work with non-logitech sites, it is not a network issue, so asking people to send them MAC addresses, as they did in the thread on logitech service site (and seems to ask here) is just plain stupid. Since I could log on to my Google account everywhere but not from this box, or from logitech service site — which has nothing to do with revue product, it is their server issue, and again, asking people to reboot everything and send them revue S/Ns and MAC addresses is stupid.
They were not able to fix this issue in last 10 days — it started around 12/19. Since then we see just silly guesswork from their side — send us your data, reboot, change cable, etc. Customer service for this product does not exists — people report phone calls cut off after 47 min of waiting.
So, nice spec, nice price, somewhat nice design but incompetent handling. If logitech wasted 100M on Google TV, they could lost more on other products if they keep handling them like this one. I could imagine that Google TV is not quite ready yet, but what I see here has nothing to do with Google, this is entirely logitech incompetence.
I will wait a week then this brick will go back to BestBuy.