Roku

I tried to link my device and set up an account online and the website doesn’t work. It won’t process my payment information and just refreshes the page. I’ve tried on two browsers. So so far my Roku 1 player is effectively useless. I actually don’t feel I should have to provide payment information anyway and I’ve certainly made at least five attempts, so I will try to go the non-​payment route. But this seems like a pretty basic problem that reflects gross incompetence on the part of the Roku corporation — there is no excuse for not having a working website. I’ve contacted customer support but after seeing all the other negative reviews I can’t say I have high hopes. I will update this review if the situation changes, but for now this product is getting a big fat zero from me — that’s the rating I would give if I could.
UPDATE: Looks like I’m up and running — so far so good, so I’m upgrading to three stars. One thing I learned is that if you complain on their Facebook page —
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you may get more of a response than you will from customer support. They sent me a link over Facebook that I was unable to get on the phone due to the language barrier. I would still rate their phone and other online support as poor. Happy viewing! Gonna watch NYPD Blue…

While their products do work out of the box, you will be hating life after they send out new periodic software updates — that is, when you have a legacy device (Roku 2 XS, etc). Planned obsolescence maybe? Whatever it is, its not a sound business practice… Their customer service is located overseas and they are very difficult to work with via email, or phone.

Unilocal Challenge 2015. ²¹²⁄₃₆₅
This little black magical device, smaller than the size of a deck of cards called The Roku is like a gift from the TV Gods. It connects my TV to WiFi and allows me to stream NetFlicks, YouTube, FaceBook, HBOGo and a ton of other channels straight to my TV. Its pretty cool. They run about $ 100.00. Mine is the second edition and has lasted a few years now.
The remote control is tiny. It is always missing because my dog takes it and burries it under her things. Or the hubsters falls asleep on it, and I know better than to disturb him. When that happens I grab the phone and use it like a remote.
If you have an extra $ 100 you can pick one up at your local Target, BestBuy, ect. Or buy them online.
#696

Roku–
I’ve been a fan a the Roku streaming device for sometime now. I knows there’s four types. There’s the Roku’s 1 – 3 and the Roku stick.
I can only speak on the $ 99.99 Roku 3, that’s the one my family and I use.
The Roku 3 has an HDMI port, Ethernet port and has Wi-​Fi. I normally go with the Ethernet option. Works way better for me.
The Roku has endless amounts of channels, some free and some you pay for. But we mainly only use the Roku for Netflix, Hulu plus, Funimation channel and Crunchyroll.
Gone are the days watching shows on our pc’s or notebooks. Also I don’t burn out our videogame systems as well.
So if you never had one, I highly suggest you give this little device a try.
Sincerely VD.

Concur with many of the other reviewers here.
Roku makes an interesting product. But who cares when the customer service is so bad? When you call the Roku Customer Service number (1−888−600−7658), the call is routed to an offshore (India?) call center where the workers barely speak English, and know NOTHING about customer service.
I left a voice mail message with their onshore (California) operation today. We’ll see if I even get a response.
I will never have anything to do with Roku again.

I’ve had a love-​hate relationship with my Roku in the year I’ve had it. Most of the time it worked just great, but a firmware update a few months ago has caused HD-​quality video to stutter on it. Roku has an online forum where issues such as this can be addressed to their tech people, and there has been a thread of several people with this problem but NOTHING has been done about it there– the last time I posted a question just asking if anyone in charge was even still reading, I got NO response.
Your other source for support is a phone number that goes to India– English is not their first language and they don’t really understand what you’re talking about. They have you jump through a few hoops re-​setting things. I was able to get them to exchange my Roku for a new one eventually, but the new one has the SAME problem! I have verified that it is not my internet provider causing the problem, but it’s just impossible to talk to these people.

Disappointed in attempting to get extended channel content activated. If you are a Comcast/​Xfinity customer you cannot activate more episodes. NOT happy!!!

Roku rocks!!! Yes, I still do have Cable TV, but I did manage to get rid of Netflix. So many way cool channels for free, these are not channels that you’d get on mainstream TV. A couple of my favorite channels on Roku are Crackle and Air One.
They also have the Angry Birds game which is lot’s of fun. I’m just not sure why so many people complain about Roku, I haven’t had any problems with Roku. I also enjoy watching some classic shows, there are a couple great older tv show that I enjoyed watching on one of the Roku channels: Man with a camera, and Sherlock Holmes. Great stuff!
I was given Roku as a gift from my Little Brother, thanks Little Bro.

My Roku started stealing from me while I was sleeping. My remote started malfunctioning; hitting ‘OK’ over and over again. it restarted by itself and went to the ‘Channel Store’ — ‘6’ HDMI Cable $ 9.99 + Tax and Shipping’ — ‘Buy Now’ — ‘Buy Now’ — ‘Buy Now’ — ‘Buy Now’ — ‘Buy Now’ — ‘Buy Now’ — ‘Buy Now’ — ‘Buy Now’. My profile was set to ‘not require PIN when purchasing. My Roku remote ordered that HDMI cable 21 times, it was able to purchase it 15 times at $ 15.80 each. I called their Customer Support who assured me they would cancel the 15 orders and send me a new remote. A little over 24 hours later I got 12 eMails confirming that 12 cables where being shipped to me with tracking number. I call customer support back and say ‘hey, what happened? I thought you were going to take care of this, that I didn’t have to worry about it’. I’ve spent over three hours on the phone at this point and the customer rep. (I’m assuming is in the Philippines), Tells me ‘oh, I have win win situation for you, we will send you a return labels, and you can send the cables back, once we see them coming back, we’ll refund your money’. I say, this isn’t a win for me, your product malfunctioned and took almost $ 250 out of my bank account, that I’m going to loose access to for over a week, I’ve spent over 3 hours on the phone, and now I have to relabel the boxes you said wouldn’t be sent to me, and drive them to the shipper; how is that a win for me? Then he says something like ‘this is just like when your computer malfunctions and you make a purchase by mistake’ I work for a company who manufactures computers, and has several online stores; you can not unplug any of our machines and plug it back in, and hit one button over and over, and mistakenly buy $ 250 worth of stuff. I don’t know of any machine that can do that.
It almost seems intentional. I didn’t even touch the button, the remote malfunctioned, and in fact I was asleep while it was happening.

Customer service sucks. No one can explain why I can remove channels from the ROJU unit BUT I can’t remove them when I log in online. I can add directly from the unit and online. After several emails going back and forth with Tech Support, i was told to email the feedback email box. Screw you ROKU! It’s called forwarding. Since my house is all Apple, guess what I’m getting?

AWFUL product support… they expect you to pay $ 9.99 for support that if they cannot fix the problem they will not refund. Screw them. I will put the $ 9.99 towards an Amazon Fire Stick. Bye Roku… don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Wish there are 0 stars option available. I would give 0 star to Roku.
Wish I had searched on Unilocal before buying it on
, the returning is TERRIBLE, the worst experience ever! Like many people mentioned, the online form is bullshit, the online chat is almost unreachable and not helpful, the customer service has very heavy accent I could barely understand their words. They try to make me not to return it by just ignore my request, then after 3 calls they said they will send me email right away with instructions on how to return. I waited, no email from roku for hours. Then I called again this time they send email again, in the email they asked me to mail it back at my own cost, and there is no other option available. When I buy it I saw a «30-​day back» no worry guarantee, I was thinking of amazon/​walmart-​kind-​of service. Shitty service. Never buy them.

Customer services is AWFUL! I told them my Roku wasn’t working and they basically said that it was my fault for not taking out an extended warranty and I should buy another one. AWFUL.

If I could I would give a — 5 stars. Worst customer service I have ever come across. Don’t waste your time or money.

I can’t review how Roku works, because I have yet to receive the product. When I went online to order it, it crashed about three times while I was filling out my shipping and billing addresses. I probably should’ve taken this is a sign, because they ended up shipping my Roku to my billing address. So when I called to get customer support to ask them if They would send me a new one, they told me I had to talk to the Postal Service, and wait for them to ship the unit back to Roku. (Assuming it hasn’t been taken by a neighbor or someone off the street, since the building is open) So Roku customer service pretty much blamed it on me, as if I was too stupid to figure out how to fill in a shipping address. The customer service agent said to me «everybody receives their Roku after ordering online so I don’t see the problem.» Most other companies when you have an issue like this would just apologize for the problem and send you a new one but apparently at Roku they blame you, make it your problem, and if you want another you’ll have to pay again. I wish I could give zero stars.
Thanks Roku!

Stay away from its support. I waited 30 minutes to get in the chat line and finally when there, the agent SM-​Dyann — A gave me exactly 20 second out of 40 minutes we where in the chat line since very time I had an input, she went to another customer, and forgot what we had discussed before asking me the same questions. They are absolutely worthless. So if your Roku give you what you need, OK but god help you is you need help. I finally hung up since she was not able to resolve my problem. Then I went on the phone and got the same SH** waiting time 22 minutes for the next operator, likely somewhere in Manila or Bangladesh. Shame on those companies that have a good product but can not support it. Remember HP, it was the same and look where they are today, a 3^rd rate entity?

Roku customer service SUCKS!
thats all…

To their credit, I got my refund promptly.
I would have kept it if they did a better job of providing info on how to get the most channels, and feeds. They have info, but it’s clumsy and hard to navigate.

The ROKU box itself is good, it works well. This review is for their support and attitude.
Software support is outsourced to Chennai, India. The staff there are polite and professional, but have absolutely no ability to help because — I suspect — the development team have no idea how to be customer centric.
They release a «feature» that is supposed to fix some unspecified issue, but instead, require the reconfiguration of a user WHOLE network. The development team never thought to let users know, let alone their support staff. And just ignore the logic, to hold onto a bad design decision.
If you do buy ROKU, just don’t expect support of you have a problem that they caused

We purchased a Roku 2 XS back in December of 2012. The unit started having technical issues about two and a half months after purchase it would randomly freeze and reset itself after a few seconds. It didn’t matter what channel we were using. I called tech support and was pretty much stonewalled by their customer service people having me go through the «reset dance». They refused to replace the unit even though it seemed pretty clear to me there was something going on with the hardware. But I was willing to give it a shot, but a few days later, once again it started acting up.
I called tech support and was put through the same song and dance, only this time I was out of luck because it was past the warranty period. How convenient that a product goes out literally days before the warranty is up. Fast forward to present day and the unit is resetting itself 2 sometimes 3 times a day. I’m expecting it to quit working any day now.
So while Roku may seem good, you better hope it holds up or you will have to face a company that has no interest in standing behind their product. I should have realized this before I bought it, because most of it’s competitors have a 1 year warranty, and not the measly 90 day one which is a red flag for a product with no real moving parts.