I agree their supprt could do a better job at communicating. Do you mean on Wi-Fi at home on the same LAN or Wi-Fi at a hotspot/Coffee house WAN? Could be the setup on your BB. What connection setup are you using?

I have just got the worst support from Sling (or any company) that I have bought equipment from. What is this $29.00 per incident.
Here is the IM session:

10:43 AM Natalia: Thank you for contacting Sling Media Technical Support. My name is Natalia. Which product are you looking for support today?
10:44 AM : Slingcatcher
10:45 AM Natalia: May I know when did you purchase the SlingCatcher, please?
10:45 AM : hmmm....I believe it was on amazon.com, it has been about 6 months so I am not totally sure
10:46 AM Natalia: Like at the beginning of this year?
10:46 AM Natalia: Can you tell a month?
10:47 AM : Why is this important?
10:47 AM Natalia: I need to add that information in your account, Brian. Also, that's in order to provide you support.
10:47 AM : ok, how about Feburary
10:48 AM Natalia: Thank you, Brian.
10:48 AM Natalia: Due to procedures from Sling Media there's going to be a charge per incident.

This means that in order for me to resolve your issue there's going to be a cost of $29.99 per incident or you have the option to get the Extended Warranty package for $49.99 one time payment for 3 years of support.
10:50 AM : ok, never mind. I will just figure it out on my own. Great support for your product. Pass this along to the management. You web site is horrible, and to get some information I have to pay you, I already gave you guys $200 for the unit. No Happy
10:50 AM : not happy
10:51 AM Natalia: I understand your position, Brian. In our website you can find all the instructions. You can use the Search fill.

10:51 AM Natalia has sent a link: www.slingmedia.com/support

10:51 AM Natalia: If you like to purchase any of those plans, I would suggest you to contact us at 877.GO.SLING (877.467.5464) to proceed with resolving your problem. For security reasons, we do not take credit card information via chat.

Once you purchased a support agreement, feel free to contact us back via chat or continue the troubleshooting over the phone and we will gladly help you.

What a bunch of crap.

This issue I have is, I get free support from several other hardware vendors (linksys/Cisco being one of them), for consumer devices in this price point. For that matter I have called LG to talk about my $1000 washer and Panasonic for my $2000 Plazma. No problems, answered my questions and did not charge me for the tech support, regardless of how long I owned the units. Additionally, slings support website is horrid. Using Google works better. Creating a good support environment will help the product in the long term, ask for money for product support when the unit if > $300 in my opinion is terrible public relations.

Paying $50 for three years of support is a deal. That's paid for with less than 2 instances. Try getting extended support coverage on any other CE device for that price.

Slinging w/ Catcher, ProHD, Pro, Solo, AV, and a Classic. Two TivoHDs, Roku Photobridge and a Roku Soundbridge, AppleTV, and Vudu.www.na9d.net Follow me on Twitter

Irdeto2engineer said:

NA9D said: . Try getting extended support coverage on any other CE device for that price.

I provide it for free for my clients regardless of time.

To be fair, you're a service provider (not a manufacturer) and your services include a recurring fee, so your ability to offer support is far different from those who make a widget.

So, if you made $100 per client one time and never got another dime from them, times 200,000 customers, how long could you offer free support? 

Matt Whitlock's Mind Over Matt'er - Technology musings, opinion, and more.

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Irdeto2engineer said:

Matt Whitlock said:

Irdeto2engineer said:

NA9D said: . Try getting extended support coverage on any other CE device for that price.

I provide it for free for my clients regardless of time.

To be fair, you're a service provider (not a manufacturer) and your services include a recurring fee, so your ability to offer support is far different from those who make a widget. So, if you made $100 per client one time and never got another dime from them, times 200,000 customers, how long could you offer free support? 

If I made US$100 x 200,000 I am sure I could afford free tech support for the few who need it. Otherwise I would just have my own forum support ( which I do ) so that most issues would be sorted from the forum. Slingmedia do not provide their own forum support do they?  Would not cost a lot to run and with the proper FAQ's stickied for small things like port forwarding then you would need so much tech support in the first place. 

I'd say you're dramatically underestimating the cost to provide telephone, chat, and other forms of support for 200,000, 300,000, who knows 1,000,000? customers, worldwide. I'd also say you're underestimating the number of customers who would require support. You say "few," but when you're dealing with the general non-tech-enthusiast masses, it'll be much higher than "a few." Plus you have to factor in the cost of defective parts exchange (inevitable for any company that makes a physical product), shipping, replacements, order tracking, etc.

Not to mention that in this example, that $200,000 will also need to take care of your payroll, expenses (office space, computers, etc), R&D, engineers, software development and patches for existing products, testing, website, order systems, sales guys, and other things.

It adds up, and it gets expensive.

Forums are great (that's our business), but not all customers will gravitate towards online forums for support. Enthusaists will, and even the advanced user, but once a product goes mainstream (like Slingbox has), you no longer have the option for a forum to be your sole form of support. 

Matt Whitlock's Mind Over Matt'er - Technology musings, opinion, and more.

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