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Slingbox sucks

December 24, 2009 on 6:57 pm | In General | 2 Comments

I bought a slingbox early this year. Watch and control your sky/cable box over the internet from anywhere in the world. Great!

After a couple months of using it, it started to play up, not connecting to the network and such like. Usually a reset would fix this.

About 9 months on and the box now refuses to connect to the network and won’t even reset. Before contacting Sling Media for support, I take a look around online and found forums full of people with the same problem. A hardware issue that means replacing the unit. Sigh, not ideal. After leaving it plugged in (not working) for a few weeks, I came back and now no lights come on. The unit is dead.

I call up Sling support but am told that they can’t help me until I register the product online. Why they can’t do it over the phone I don’t know, not a great start. After registering online, I call back and am advised that the product only has a support/warranty period of 90 days. I’ve never bought an electrical product before that didn’t have at least a 1 year warranty! If I want any support now, I need to pay 29.99. Thing is, It’s quite clearly a hardware fault so even if I pay this rip off charge, I won’t get anywhere unless they agree to replace the unit.

If possible, buy an alternative to the Slingbox or other Slingmedia products. Their support is practically non-existent and based on the number of people complaining about the same hardware issues, there’s obviously common faults. If there support had actually made any kind of attempt to help then I’d have considered buying another one, even with its faults. But now there’s no chance I’ll pay out more cash for any Slingmedia product.