These HR20s dont seem to be a very well made product.

[vid53]

I purchased 2 HR20s from Best Buy and had to take both of them back the next day. One had a bad tuner and the other a bad card reader.Then this morning I get up and one of them said: insert a valid card.
Turns out Directv is sending me a new card in hopes that is the problem. I do not feel very confident about these receivers. THIS IS SCARY!!
Has anyone else had a problem like this?

Vid53

[lwilli201]

It seems that every electronic product has a large failure rate. It is not hard to find any particular refurbished electronic device. TV's, computers, printers, DVD players, you name it, referbs abound. It seems that it is cheaper to distribute a small percentage of bad products then to have aggressive QA and testing. Most HR 20's work great. I have 3 with no problems.

[narcolept]

It seems that every electronic product has a large failure rate. It is not hard to find any particular refurbished electronic device. TV's, computers, printers, DVD players, you name it, referbs abound. It seems that it is cheaper to distribute a small percentage of bad products then to have aggressive QA and testing. Most HR 20's work great. I have 3 with no problems.

Which is why it's amazing when people get up in arms over getting a refurbished receiver. My HR20-100 was new in a sealed box when I got it, but I never hesitate to jump on a factory refurbed deal on electronics, as at the very least I know that whatever gremlins it had were already fixed, plus it got a second QA check at the factory.

[flapbreaker]

My HR-10 Tivo I bought a couple years ago for $1000 came with a bad HDMI card as did most.

[homerdodge]

Which is why it's amazing when people get up in arms over getting a refurbished receiver. My HR20-100 was new in a sealed box when I got it, but I never hesitate to jump on a factory refurbed deal on electronics, as at the very least I know that whatever gremlins it had were already fixed, plus it got a second QA check at the factory.

Think again. When our HR10-250 finally died, we opted to get a free replacement through the the Maintenance program, and the HR20 they sent to us, by overnight delivery, was a refurbished HR20-100 with a bad tuner #2. I told the CSR that one would think a refurbished unit would have had more eyes on it and they'd manage to get a properly working unit out the door. No such luck. Apparently it's more the luck of the draw.

The replacement to that unit was a new HR20-700, hand-delivered by a tech, and it has been working fine.

The tech left the bad HR20, saying D* would send RMA info for returning it, which they never did. It's still sitting here after several months. Good for a spare disk I suppose.

[coacho]

I agree and yes.

[CT_Wiebe]

Both of my HR20-700s were "new" (from CC). They both had 3 QC stickers indicating that they had passed 3 separate, different, QC tests. The first one was returned, because it had a bad card reader (apparently that's not included in the testing). The second one (my local CC only had 2) seems to work just fine.

Apparently, they're making the "usual" mistake of saving a few bucks by not running complete QC testing. If nobody looks at the real "bottom line", they don't realize that their defective unit rate costs them more than fixing the problems at the source (with cheap labor rates). The usual commercial defective parts rate allowable (LTPD = Lot Tolerance Percent Defective) is 10% maximum (and that is considered too high for most companies with items selling for more than $50). I wonder what the real LTPD is.

[schneid]

I think these big corporations are pretty good at making money. Therefore, it must be a good business decision to let us do the QC for them.

It does seem that that this business model has come back to bite Dell but there are alternatives to Dell products. I don't see DirecTV changing until Dish offers a clearly superior product. If SBC (dba as AT&T) buys them, that ain't going to happen.

The only way to get them to change is fight back. Keep on them until your stuff works. Complain to your AG. Lobby for more competition. Write the FCC. Dispute charges on your credit card. Sue them in Small Claims court. Write bad reviews on the web. Keep fighting until shipping good products becomes cheaper than fighting with you.

For me, my HR20-100 works fine and I am happy with the service. In my opinion, most problems are caused by quick and dirty installs and that's a whole nother story.

[wwwjames]

I purchased 2 HR20s from Best Buy and had to take both of them back the next day. One had a bad tuner and the other a bad card reader.Then this morning I get up and one of them said: insert a valid card.
Turns out Directv is sending me a new card in hopes that is the problem. I do not feel very confident about these receivers. THIS IS SCARY!!
Has anyone else had a problem like this?

Vid53

Yep, I bough mine from Best Buy 29-Oct and had bad card errors. The DTV tech sent me a new card, but I could not wait until the end of the week, so exchanged @ Best Buy. I looked @ the side of the box to see where the unit was made, the old one was from china, the replacement from mexico. Needless to say, the "Hecho en Mexico" model works like a charm !

[Earl Bonovich]

Yep, I bough mine from Best Buy 29-Oct and had bad card errors. The DTV tech sent me a new card, but I could not wait until the end of the week, so exchanged @ Best Buy. I looked @ the side of the box to see where the unit was made, the old one was from china, the replacement from mexico. Needless to say, the "Hecho en Mexico" model works like a charm !

So... you are 100% positive it was a bad card reader... and not just a bad card.....

How did you test to make sure that it was the card reader, if you didn't wait for a new card.

[Dr. Booda]

It seems that every electronic product has a large failure rate. It is not hard to find any particular refurbished electronic device. TV's, computers, printers, DVD players, you name it, referbs abound. It seems that it is cheaper to distribute a small percentage of bad products then to have aggressive QA and testing. Most HR 20's work great. I have 3 with no problems.

I have been purchasing electronic devices for over 20 years and I have never had a single item fail out of the box new until these HR20 units. Items have failed just after warranty periods expire, but never right away.

Most companies have QA/QC procedures and good product/manufacturing engineering groups in place to prevent failures. Quality is instilled in their company culture (TQM), and it would be embarrassing for Management to have field unit failures become commonplace.

Yes, a refurbishment program has some advantages for cost perhaps, but you are assuming that someone is actually taking the time to look over the units properly. If there is a lack of proper QA/QC testing on the first run products, why would it exist for refurbs? The proper controls aren’t in place anywhere along the Manufacturing chain.