In another forum a new poster, claiming to be a Logitech/Harmony Employee indicated that effective December 1st that telephone Tech Support would be restricted to 60 days following purchase. I have not seen this elsewhere.

Is it true?

That is very true. You can still use their free Email support after 60 days without any problem and they have replied back to me within a day.

Thank you for the reply. This is a huge disappointment to me, and I am quite sure many others. While I have been a Harmony remote user for many years, I will not purchase another because of this presumably cost saving driven decision.

Do other universal remotes offer free lifetime telephone support? I doubt it. And they still offer lifetime support by email. I don't understand your reasoning.

60 days should be more than enough time to learn everything there is about such a simple device.

You gotta be kidding. You have only to read this Forum to know that many people have ongoing "issues" well beyond 60 days. After many years of providing excellent telephone support to all that needed it, a fiscal decision has been made to eliminate that support after 60 days.

I am not challenging that business decision. Simply observing that it is going to in-fact cost them some future sales - including mine.

YMMV

Is the email support so dismal that it would actually cause a loss in sales...?

Phone support for 60 days is pretty solid. I would think beyond that, any problems would be either equipment changes, (so not really life threatening), or warranty issues.

To get support beyond what's being offered. I would think someone would have to go the route of a Custom Installer and pay full pop for programming. ...And if your willing to go that far, (and pay that much $$$), a Harmony may not be the best option to begin with.

These remotes are like the AOL of universal remotes. After programming JP1 remotes for years I can tell you that programming a Harmony, is so intuitive that a child could do it.

They have a well thought out interface and some very clever methods to accomplish almost anything you want to do....With ease.

sounds like a rep to me... ;)

Does your gushing above mean you don't have a problem with the new help service policy...? You didn't mention anything about it so I'm not sure on your stance....lol.

Well Salti... Looks like your the only one that has issue with the new policy. I'm surprised that more aren't chiming in on either side of the coin.

I am an audio installer with a small company located in the northeast. I have been using Harmony remotes for 5 years. In that time I have sold and installed over a thousand systems using their remotes.
Their quality control has always been an issue, but their technical support has more than made up for it.
I know most of the senior technical support staff by name.
Yesterday, I called their dealer support line and requested support on an account that was set up in August of this year.
The boy that answered the phone informed me that he couldn't help me because the account was more than 60 days old.
I asked for level 2 support and was told that he couldn't pass me on.
I asked to speak to a manager and was told, no!
I hung up and called back. I got another young kid who had obviously been hired just to break the bad news to harmony dealers and got nowhere with him. I was told I would get a phone call within a day.
So here I am with over one thousand people with harmony remotes that will have problems over time and no one to help me.
I feel completely betrayed
That's life, I guess.

@smokinghot, I re-read my post and by gosh you're right. I don't think a Rep could have wrote such a glowing assessment of the Harmony.

No, I don't give a darn about telephone support unless I need warranty replacement. I'm one of those guys that never reads the manual ; }

Jack

Ok here is my beef. I bought this remote 3 weeks ago and set up a account. I bought it partly based on the free tech support that I had been reading about. Well I ran into some problems and needed to call tech support. The on hold recording that comes on does indacate that harmony owners are entitled to 60 days of free tech support. Sorry but the way the recording sounds, its like they just added this free tech support and that they are giving you something that they didnt have before. As for the item being so simple to program that no one should need tech support after 60 days is partially true. But in my case I programmed correctly and my "buttons list" just disapeard from the screen. There is nothing in the drop down menus. Since yours and mine configurations are stored on their website, in my opinion they should be obligated to continue the free tech support by phone. I could understand this policy if I could store my own configurations on my own computer. They could keep a record on line as well. Harmony has been charging a premium for their remotes while still offering good product for the money. But there are other remotes that do the same thing as the Harmonys for less. So far I would rate this device as awesome, the tech support as average and the software as average. Have had problems with tech support and software so far. I have had tech support tell me that I could not do things that later I figured out you could do. Software lost all of my buttons after I learned 3 hours of remote commands do to the factory commands for a Lexicon MC-1 being just awefull. Sorry I rambled on but I thought the whole story would help explain my frustration.

That brings up a extremely good point. If they had developed an end user programming editor from word go, they most likely would have not needed the extensive help center to begin with. It's obviously to late in the game for them to correct that mistake. Oh well... here's hoping that they responsive to the emails.

...On a another note. At first I found it surprising that the regulars here were avoiding this thread, and the issue in general. However it dawned on me today, that there simply isn't an easy way to spin doctor this. A good chunk of replies from the Gurus here are 'cut & paste' posts about calling the help center, and advanced stuff like how to get to level2 support. I for one am curious about how this will effect the traffic in this forum. Most likely a wack load of first time posters, without getting any replies.

Shame..

There's nothing to "spin doctor". It's an understandable cost cutting move. However, they still have email support available so as long as they're responding to email you can still get things done when needed.

So why does this forum and also the phone lines teem with requests for help?

Most every question posed on the forums could also be answered by E-mail or phone call. lol