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Roku TV bricked until agreeing to new terms of service (programming.dev)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

300 comments fedilink hide all child comments

See title - very frustrating. There is no way to continue to use the TV without agreeing to the terms. I couldn't use different inputs, or even go to settings from the home screen and disconnect from the internet to disable their services. If I don't agree to their terms, then I don't get access to their new products. That sucks, but fine - I don't use their services except for the TV itself, and honestly, I'd rather by a dumb TV with a streaming box anyway, but I can't find those anymore.

Anyway, the new terms are about waiving your right to a class action lawsuit. It's weird to me because I'd never considered filing a class action lawsuit against Roku until this. They shouldn't be able to hold my physical device hostage until I agree to new terms that I didn't agree at the time of purchase or initial setup.

I wish Roku TVs weren't cheap walmart brand sh*t. Someone with some actual money might sue them and sort this out...

EDIT: Shout out to @[email protected] for recommending the brand "Sceptre" when buying my next (dumb) TV.

EDIT2: Shout out to @[email protected] for recommending LG smart TVs as a dumb-TV stand in. They apparently do require an agreement at startup, which is certainly NOT ideal, but the setup can be completed without an internet connection and it remembers input selection on powerup. So, once you have it setup, you're good to rock and roll.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Hisense did this to me and my TV, but in fact actually broke the TV's wifi when it forced an update that I didn't want and couldn't decline. I argued with them and escalated it for 4 months and nothing came of it. I reported them to my state's attorney general and the BBB. But this is definitely a class action lawsuit that will happen sooner or later.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I have a Hisense and had a similar experience. I was watching something fullscreen on an HDMI input, and then it suddenly switched inputs and showed a fullscreen firmware update prompt. I had no choice available other than to agree to update the firmware, no cancel button, couldn't change inputs, nothing, the only choice was to update the firmware. So I unplugged the TV.

About 10 seconds after I powered it back on, the exact same update prompt happened, still with no choice to decline it. I pulled power and booted it back up one more time just to be sure, met with the update prompt again.

This made me very angry.

The next time I powered it on, I had a packet capture running to see where it was phoning home. I created a firewall rule blocking all the hostnames it tried to connect to at startup, pulled the plug, and then booted it back up. No more update prompt, and it hasn't happened again. Good thing they don't download and pre-stage the new firmware, I guess.

Let me know if you want the hostnames and I'll PM them to you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

At this point I just refuse to ever connect smart TVs to wifi, it's not worth it

[–] [email protected] 47 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Just in case anyone needs to hear this, bbb isn't a government department. They are quite literally yelp before yelp and you can straight up pay to get bad reviews taken down from both. It would be better to put them on blast on social media since that sometimes gets the companies attention to try and fix PR.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It would be better to our them on blast on social media since that sometimes gets the companies attention to try and fix PR.

Works almost every time. I had a ticket with a vendor open at work for just about 3 months, and then only replies I'd gotten on the ticket was the "We've received your support request which we'll promptly ignore!" autoresponse upon opening, and then another auto-response a month later saying the ticket was being assigned to another department. I'd replied to the ticket ~20 times asking for updates in that time.

I finally got sick of essentially yelling into an empty room and called out the company, their marketing team, their support team, and their CEO on Twitter, making sure to @ each one of them in the message. I got a reply from their CEO and an actual human responded to the ticket less than an hour later.

It's shitty and a last resort, but it's generally very effective.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Believe it or not I've had good luck a couple of times in the past when I was getting royally screwed over by what was supposed to be a legit company by looking up the email address to someone very high up in corporate, like the CFO or COO, and CC'ing them a reply in an already long and fucked up support email thread meandering down it's path to nowhereville. I'm pretty sure I've gotten some of the CS reps responsible in deep water, too.