Customer Abuse

When signing up for Channels, i.e. paying for a subscription, one sees the following:
If you have any questions, visit our support site at https://community.getchannels.com, contact us at [email protected], or call at +1 434-602-1751.
The phone number answers with a recording saying they don’t answer the phone or take phone messages! (Reminds me of the Three Stooges gag of saying “see this” then sticking two fingers in the eyes.)
I emailed both support at getchannels and at fancybits, asking that I not be billed until the dvr was enabled. I got a receipt of reversal from fancybits but no reply from getchannels support.
I had tried first to revive my subscription then to re-enable the dvr, which had resulted in the dvr seeming to go into an infinite loop. This time after getting a refund I disabled the dvr ( on a WD MyCloud Home drive) and attempted to resubscribe from the dvr enable function, which seems to hit an infinite loop trying to charge the credit card. Is nobody at Channels embarrassed enough by this kind of behavior to reach out and attempt to help.

Have a little patience. I am not a young guy and work in tech, and would rate these guys as the best support I’ve every had.

5 Likes

Why are you expecting two separate email responses? You got your reversal. Why would you send the same request to two different email addresses? This seems odd.

What issue are looking for support to address? If it is the infinite loop, uninstall the server software from your device and then reinstall to make sure you have the latest version. Then try to subscribe.

I don’t understand. You asked to not be billed and we canceled your subscription and even refunded the previous charge.

If there was another issue you needed help with, we apologize. Please email us again at [email protected]. We like to address specific issues with customers via our email support channel, not necessarily on our community forum.

Thanks!

2 Likes

My email to [email protected] was sent from [email protected] on 02/14/2021. I agree that is a better place to resolve technical issues with specific installations and I am awaiting a reply.
I hope you realize I am rooting for your company and I hope your customers and potential customers realize these “customer abuse” complaints are minor. I did compare the phone thing to a gag and I did point out you issued a prompt refund. Had this been ATT, I wouldn’t be waiting for a refund, my house would be in foreclosure by now!

Again, your email was answered and we never received any reply that we didn't help you with another issue. Please open a new ticket by emailing us and we'll respond promptly.

1 Like

Why is this labeled customer abuse? You got what you wanted… I suggest renaming this thread

2 Likes

Me too... I'm looking at the title and picturing the customer tied to a chair in a poorly light room getting smacked around for having an issue. :joy:

What would make this customer happy is not to have a refund for an undelivered product, the law demands that and even ATT and the cable companies respect that. What would make me happy is if billing occurred after delivery, e.g. their DVR answers a ping or they have communicated with it in someway. I would also happily read that they cannot afford the expense of phone support. I am not quite so happy to be offered a “phone support number” which will deliver the same prerecorded audio message. And finally, I would have been most happy, and would not have opened this thread, if they had read and responded to the technical half of my email to support.
Here is a copy of that email:

Dear Sirs:
I just enabled my subscription and attempted to install the channels dvr on a my cloud home network drive, but the configure option presents a page with a start button which does nothing. Plex is at my-cloud home.local:32400 but there is no server at :8089.
If I go to get channels.com/install, log on and request an install on a my cloud home I am taken to the dvr files created today but the channels server is still unavailable.

It was not my intention to subscribe to be an alpha tester. Will you please cancel my subscription until you have this bug fixed.
Sincerely,

That this email to this day has gone unanswered saddens me because I am a customer very hopeful for success of Channels. And I hope they can see this thread as on topic, constructive criticism.

So you want to be able to use their product without having to pay for it? You asked them to cancel and it sounds like they did and sounds like they have proof they did. You never asked for help resolving the issue in the email you provided.

2 Likes

You had a 30 day trial, not understanding why you didn’t cancel before the 30 days when you couldn’t get it to work.

2 Likes

You lost me at saying these guys abused you, and refer to AT&T and cable companies as being better?

You aren't buying a hamburger here, its a service. Many services are pre-paid. For a small shop like the Channels team, I doubt they want to deal with AR problems that would occur if they were trying to chase people around after the fact to get paid. Try getting access to Neflix, Hulu, Apple Music, Spotify, a pre-paid cellular phone, any hosting company, Amazon Prime, etc., etc., etc. BEFORE you pay for the services.

1 Like

Richard thank you for this question, I think it gets at why my experience differs from most customers. When I decided to evaluate Channels I registered for the free trial and I agreed to be billed after a month, back then loading and running the DVR service went flawlessly. Subsequently, for personal reasons I realized I hadn’t the time to look at Channels and after about a week canceled my subscription. After more than a month I decided to give it another go, fully expecting that they had kept the history of my subscription and that I would be billed. Unfortunately, the real IP address of the My Cloud Home net drive on which my instance of their DVR server resides had changed. I suspect that their failure to properly detect this (I was after all renewing my subscription from the new IP address.) is what caused their activation process to hang.

Jon I am still waiting for a reply from Customer Service.

I kindly asked you to open a new support ticket via email as your last one was closed and didn't exactly have a technical question in it.

Please do so and we can work with what your issue is.

1 Like

Again, sounds like you didn't really ask for help. Based on your email you didn't ask for them to resolve any issues you were having. You basically stated that you wanted to use the software without paying for it.

i...just don't get this.
Used up trial...wants another one>
Or actually trying to sign up and buy the software to use
both...idk?

Not sure if trolling or just...unable to understand, or if there is some technical issue they trying to get help with.

1 Like

Mr. Maddox, this post is intended for that person who “closed” my email to [email protected], I am hoping you can see that he or she reads it:

Dear Madam or Sir;
Please accept my apology for the lack of clarity in my email which may have caused you to close it. Despite being closed, a copy of the email is contained in this thread, and I refer you to that copy in offering an explanation of my intention.
In trying to re-subscribe to the Channels DVR I seemed to be dealing with two entities Fancybits for billing and Getchannels for the DVR. When I was left with a DVR hung in the registration process and a receipt from Fancybits for the DVR service. I sent Fancybits an email saying the DVR had not been delivered and demanding a refund and I sent you the above referenced email. I had no idea these two emails might be going to the same person and you might feel obliged to answer only one of them. The second half of my email to support was intended as stated, to have you delay billing until the bug in your registration process had been repaired and I had been notified.
When I sent the email I was confident that there was nothing I could do on my end short of assuming a new identity to fix the problem, I had purged the previous DVR server and loaded a fresh one.
If you will email me with a note that the bug has been fixed, or an explanation of why you believe there is not a flaw in your registration process, or asking for more specific information to help you fix it, I would appreciate it.
For the future my advice is never to irrecoverably close an inquiry to support without first replying to it and stating your intention.
Sincerely,
Bill Hagerty

1 Like

Please take this request and email it to us at [email protected], as requested, which is our preferred support channel.

I'm closing this thread.

1 Like