Now You’re E-Mailing Me Commercials?

I’d like to talk about the increasingly annoying fact that the service I pay for so that I can fast forward through commercials and record live television without the frustration of having to buy DVD-R’s or worse, VHS tapes seems to not only to be cashing my $20 check each month, but also increasing the number of commercial advertisements I see via their user interface and now, via e-mail.

This has been a frustration for me for some time – but we finally hit critical mass this morning, when I woke up to an email from the TiVo Advisers survey service asking me to participate in a survey for TiVo – something I am generally o.k. with. My philosophy is that you can’t bitch about something you aren’t working to try to change – so I click the link and start the survey – the first few questions are demographic questions, which ask me about my age, gender, etc – then we get to the ‘good stuff’

Now, I should tell you in advance that TiVo ads are fairly non-intrusive – I can avoid them (for the most part) if/when I want and I’m not being forced to interact with them…although this isn’t always the case and I am seeing more and more of the more intrusive types of advertising…

The fact that the ads exist at all is frustrating, but semi-understandable – the fact that I can avoid them, sort of makes up for the fact that they exist at all.

So, back to the survey – I answer the demographic questions and then the survey goes off in a direction I never expected – it asks me if I saw a specific advertising campaign, but they do it in a way that’s confusing and sort of misleading – the text went something along the lines of “Did you notice the bar at the bottom of TiVo Central that advertises certain products or services, for example, Coors Light”

“For example, Coors Light” – this is key phrasing here.

This is where it gets a little shifty in my opinion. Coors Light wasn’t an ‘example’ – in fact, the remainder of the questions presented centered solely around Coors Light and not TiVo at all.

I was a little surprised, because A) I don’t drink Coors Light and B) I could have sworn this was a TiVo survey…I mean, I see the little TiVo guy..but the questions keep getting stranger and stranger…

Thinking about your overall impression of Coors Light, how strongly do you agree or disagree that the following attributes are associated with Coors Light?

Then it asked me to rank, on a 5 bubble scale, what I thought about the attributes – color, taste, smell and reputation etc…it was strange, but I continue…

Please think about Coors Light and imagine it were a person with its own personality. How strongly do you agree or disagree that Coors Light…?

What?! Not only were the above two questions presented – there were at least two more in which it asked me specific and pointed questions about Coors Light – and nothing, at all, about TiVo or it’s products. Also? You have to answer on their scale – they gave no “N/A” option…I either strongly disagree or strongly agree (or some place in the middle) – those were my options.

So how will answering questions about Coors Light better my TiVo experience?Are you saying I’ll need to get drunk to enjoy it?

Also, why is TiVo sending me a survey about Coors Light? Why not, I don’t know, Coors? This all seems very backdoor-ish to me – like some sort of corporate work around.

This has really frustrated me today. I’m all about improving the services I receive from TiVo – that’s why I opted in to the survey panel – but this is just to much – I didn’t opt into a service that would send me random surveys about random products I don’t use nor have any intention of using.

Before posting this, I tried, without success, to find the Terms/Policies regarding the TiVo Survey Panel and I had no luck. What I did find is that I’d opted out of the survey panel (which I forgot about) – so now I’m not even sure why I’m getting the surveys to start with.

For the record – I don’t drink – Coors or otherwise. I do, however, have experience creating UI/usability surveys and this specific survey, if they even get the data they are hoping for, is complete crap. Don’t survey people on products/services they don’t use – they almost always rate the product/service poorly, because they don’t use it.

Stupid.

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