Ceiva Advanced Digital Photo Receiver

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Summary: Ceiva --The Bunny that Keeps Charging
Review: I purchased a Ceiva about a year ago, and it works very very well. However! And this is a WARNING: After the mandatory three-month "subscription," which one has to buy in order to purchase the product, they kept charging the monthly fee to my credit-card account -- even though I signed up for three months only (the minimum), and also told them to cancel, and also had my credit card company "charge back" the improper charges. Despite all that history -- they have attempted to sneak through ANOTHER unauthorized charge ... perhaps they hope that folks simply won't notice. (...). It is shame, because the product does work well.

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Summary: Was Happy -- I am no Longer
Review: I have been a Ceiva subscriber for several years. For some reason, Ceiva decided this year that one month before my annual renewal date they would delete one of my photos and replace it with an advertisement indicating that my subscription is up for renewal. The message indicates that I can remove it by either manually deleting it or renewing. Though I delete this message every day, it comes back the next. It seems as though Ceiva has taken the position that it is acceptable to co-opt some of the limited space on your frame in order to force you into renewing early. If you don't mind this intrusion, Ceiva is for you. I, however, will be looking for a frame that does not require a subscription service.

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Summary: How to Thrill a Mom
Review: We got one of these for my Mother-in-law for Christmas, because she 1)lives in another state in a retirment community and 2)gets flustered just trying to use the TV remote, so email and web sites are out of the question for sending new pictures to her. Of course there's still good old snail-mail, but we thought she'd get a kick out of the instantaneous gratification of getting pictures the day we take them.

Well! It turned out to give her a bigger kick than we expected. Every time we send a new batch of pictures she calls us all excited about them and keeps asking, "But how on earth do you do it?" The thing is: she doesn't actually need to know! We are able to take care of everything from our end, from uploading pictures to even setting how fast the slide-show goes and what time the receiver turns off at night. She doesn't have to do a thing, and that's a good thing because she really is very intimidated by technology.

On the advice of another review I read here, we set up the receiver and the online account from our own home when we first got the Ceiva, and made sure everything was working properly before we drove to her home and gave it to her. All we had to do was plug it in for her. I did show her how to use the "next" and "previous" buttons but she doesn't even really need to know that - she would have been perfectly content if I'd never even showed her how to open the button bar at all. She doesn't have to do a thing, and that was what we were aiming for.

The coolest thing is that I think, while she likes the gift and the pictures very much, the best part for her is the way all her friends and neighbors gush over how neat it is and how they want one, too.

One bit of advice: I would recommend that before you plug your investment into the wall, buy a surge protector - the kind that you plug both electrical and phone lines in to - and be sure to use that. I am guessing that power surges are behind some of the comments I've seen here from people who say their unit "just stopped working" a few months after getting it. After having our futzy phone lines blow out countless answering machines, cordless phones, and laptop modems, I never plug any electronic device into a phone line anymore without a surge protector. You can get a very good one that plugs directly into the wall (no extra cords) for under $20, and it's well worth it.

The only other thing I'd recommend for future versions of the Ceiva is Bigger Buttons. The buttons themselves are very sleek and tiny, but they and the text labeling them are 'way too small for most Seniors to use, and it seems to me that the folks who get the most benefit from the Ceiva are in fact Seniors.

Another thing: what is all this whinging on and on about the paltry monthly online fee that is charged for maintaining your photos on the Ceiva web site to upload to the receiver? I think it's a pitance and well worth the joy it gives to Mom. We spend much more than that on our regular online access account, not to mention on long-distance calls to her - in the grand scheme of things I think it's a perfectly reasonable fee for the service.


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Summary: the jury is still out on my Ceiva
Review: Despite all the negative reviews on this product, we went ahead and bought one anyway (with our fingers crossed of course). If it works as I expect it should, this will be one of the best gifts EVER!! My mother is so non-technical, it will be awesome to share our digital pictures with her with no complicated action on her end. I can't wait for her to open it and start getting pictures downloaded!

I really hope the Ceiva company gives this product the attention and support it needs to become a more reliable/solid purchase for consumers like me... if not, maybe a company like Microsoft will buy them out and do it right (or come up with their own and crush 'em)!


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Summary: CEIVA SUCKS!
Review: I was very excited about buying a CEIVA for my technology-phobic, West Coast parents, who are in their 80s. I thought they would love seeing pictures of the grandkids, and they did... the one time it worked. After MANY attempts to fix it, including over a dozen phone calls to CEIVA to try to get the problem resolved, CEIVA acknowledged defeat and told us to return the unit to them. (I might add in that 1) calls to customer service take FOREVER as they will keep you on hold for a a LOOOOONG time before you actually get to talk to anyone; 2) they weren't particularly nice during the calls, and intimated to my parents that perhaps they weren't smart enough to figure out how the thing worked).

Well, my parents returned the unit to CEIVA as instructed, after pointing out to the company that we hadn't bought it directly from them. CEIVA said this was ok -- they even provided a return authorization number. My parents promptly mailed it off. Thank goodness I told them as a precaution to send it with delivery tracking and insurance. CEIVA never acknowledged having received it; when I contacted them 6 weeks later to say that I hadn't seen a refund on my credit card, they couldn't find the receiver; then, when they finally did find it, they refused to refund our money, stating that their only remedy was to send a new receiver. Well, at this point, as you can imagine, my parents didn't want the friggin' thing. So I am now stuck with a $150 receiver and nobody to use it. CEIVA, and CEIVA customer service, is horrible. I wouldn't recommend their products to ANYONE.

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Summary: Cool little picture frame
Review: I got one of these for my parents to send picts of the grand-kids... they LOVE it. Getting another one for the wife's parents.

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Summary: Would have been good without the required subscription
Review: I checked this out at a local store and was impressed by the quality of this digital picture frame. Ten years ago I briefly owned a digital frame. Things really haven't changed that much since, except the Ceiva has a nice screen and seems easier to use than previous generations.

But it's the subscription that turned me off and made me thing this makes a poor holiday gift (unless you also pay for the subscription rather than forcing your giftee to pay). I think the frame itself probably costs just a few bucks to make, and they charge you almost $150, plus they want to get more money frmo you by charing you a monthly fee. That's just a rip-off to me. (Maybe I'm just too cheap.)

These days computers have become so easy to use that even grandmas and grandpas can become experts at using Windows, so I don't really see the benefits of something like this. If they are afraid to turn on a computer, they'll probably be uncomfortable plugging this in, too.

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Summary: Broke after a year
Review: It's a great idea, but the device broke after just one year. Also, Ceiva is kind of scummy - they won't refund your yearly subscription fee if you cancel after 180 days - sounds illegal, but who's going to fight over $40.

Rating:
Summary: A very popular gift
Review: We've given this gift to several of our family members and it has been a HUGE hit. Our family is spread out all over, and many of them are not computer savvy.

It has allowed my grandparents, who are thankfully still with us, to see their great-grandchild grow up on a daily basis even though they live very far away from us and are so afraid of new technology that they don't even have a VCR (they got one as a gift once, but it was "too complicated" so they gave it back. They absolutely love the Ceiva.

We are able to send out photos to all of these Ceivas and when our family members wake up in the morning, they are on display. Do I wish the service was cheaper? Well sure, it is always nice to spend less money, but I think the service is worth the fee because of the amount of joy it has brought to the people we have given it to. It helps us feel very connected over the many miles.

I've had to contact customer service around 6 times on behalf of the various Ceivas we've purchased. The first two times they were great and fast. Then they went through a period of being very slow. I think their sales outpaced their expectations and they weren't ready for customer service. The last two times I contacted them the response was reasonably fast, and they took care of the problem completely. As of the last time I spoke to them they were taking care of customer service in house still, which I am very glad of. I am so sick of companies who outsource.

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Summary: Great gift for grandparents
Review: True, you must subscribe. But if you are purchasing it for a grandparent or anyone who has no computer, it is still cheaper than internet access. I look at it as an ongoing gift. I purchased one of these frames for each grandparent, and I renew them on a 3 year basis, which is cheaper. The grandparents LOVE getting up and checking the frame each day to see the new pictures I put on. Since they live 900 miles away, it is a great way for them to see the kids growing and keep up with what they are doing. They don't have computers, so I handle the controlling of the frame from mine. It is really a wonderful gift!