@ Sarah – I didn’t mean to single your video out, and am glad that you at least included the PPP warning. I wouldn’t feel bad about the campaign being pulled if I were you. Sooner or later, someone else would have included the bumper and you would have seen the same response. I’m not sure why you’d want to be supporting pay per post to begin with, but can at least respect that you are making the proper disclosures.

P.S. You can’t imagine what a competitive girl I am. Dual still on?

As far as getting over my bad self, you are right and I do have a tendency to over react to things, but over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time finding and blogging these grassroots things and it stings to think that these sources may not be as authentic as I came to believe. I will of course get over this, but TiVo really is better off by abandoning this strategy, because in the long run, it will threaten their reputation for having such an amazing product.

Oh yeah.. you need to step off your bad self. You sir – I challenge to a tivo duel!

Just kidding.. but it sounded funny in my head.

@Snarky – I hated posting this, I love TiVo more than just about anyone I know. I’m hoping that TiVo will take my criticism to heart and will end the program for the better good of their community. Normally I’m a cynic too, but as a longtime member of the cult of TiVo, I’ve always viewed their grassroots support as being 100% genuine. To see that part of that is being faked is very discouraging and forces me to re-evaluate my own commitment to a company that is willing to lie to their customers.

@Dave – I thought about sending TiVo an email, but I tend to prefer to shoot first and ask questions later. The last time I asked for info from the company, they choose to ignore my emails, so I’m not very optimistic that they’ll even publicly address this shortcoming. Hopefully you are right and this is really just a mistake by some PR hack, but I’m not very optimistic that they are going to help you get to the bottom of this. If you even get an email back saying no comment, I’d be surprised. Hopefully I’m wrong and TiVo won’t be afraid to admit that they made a mistake, but if they try to ignore this, I think it will only end up making this blunder worse.

It also rubs me the wrong way.

Being a cynic, I occasionally hold onto hope that one or two companies aren’t trying to con me. Tivo has such a high user satisfaction rating, but they can’t seem to find a marketing campaign that really engages most outside of the cult of Tivo. Odd really.

I hope Tivo realizes that doing things on the “down-low” hurts them more than it helps them.