Puck’s Blog

A few years back we splurged and bought ourselves a Programmable Universal Remote.  As I always do on such purchases I did my research online, comparing features, prices, and customer satisfaction, and decided on the Logitech Harmony 880 Universal Remote.  That’s it to the right, beside its charging station.

The remote worked great, allowing us to easily switch between our digital cable, XBox, PS2 and DVD player.  Every function was supported, every piece of hardware was recognized.  When I got an XBox 360, the remote software was able to update it to fully control it too.

But right from the start we had a problem — the charging station was finicky.  In order to get the remote to sit on it and charge, it often had to be on a slight angle.  Even then I’d often have to monkey with it for minutes to get it to start charging, and once it was you had to let it sit untouched and unbumped or the whole dance had to start again.  I googled for an answer to this problem and noticed that many others were having the same problem and at that time Logitech didn’t have an answer for them.  I sucked it up and waited.  The battery lasts long enough that one overnight charge per week was plenty, so we just put up with the hassle.

About a week ago I was having even more problems getting the remote to charge and finally decided to google for a solution again.  By now we were out of warranty, but I thought that perhaps some kind of sandpapering or even soldering could help the contacts meet properly.  I didn’t care, I just wanted it to work.  I was surprised to find that not only had Logitech owned up to there being a problem with the charging station, but that they had fixed it and were sending out replacements to those that asked for it.  There was even a report online by someone who was out of warranty that managed to get it.

So I gave Logitech support a call.  The “Tier 1″ woman I got was very helpful and after going through her support script — I’m technically savvy so I wanted to skip past it, but she couldn’t — she acknowledged the problem with the base but reported that because I was out of warranty she didn’t have the authority to get a replacement sent.  My heart sank, but she followed it up with, “but Tier 2 support can, so I’m going to bump you up to Tier 2 with a note that you’ll need a new charging station.”

And she did.  And when I talked to the Tier 2 guy, he listened to the problem, asked a few specifics then went on hold and came back to tell me he’d be sending out a replacement charging station!  Out of warranty!

And today a courier arrived with a big box and inside it contained not just the charging station but a whole new remote as well!  Of course I have to ship back the defective one, so no, I don’t have a spare for someone that wants it.  With support calls normally a real pain in the butt to get anything done with it was a real pleasure dealing with Logitech, especially since I acknowledged the entire way that I was out of warranty and should have called right away.

The new remote is charging on its station right now.  I carelessly dropped it down and it instantly made the “charging” sound and the charging light came on.  One less tech annoyance down.  Thanks Logitech!