I am becoming increasingly concerned as to whether I should ditch all my ROKU devices.
I started with two, added another this month and just purchased two more devices I was going to leave at sick relatives house since I have been going back and forth providing care. At the beginning of May, I set up the newest Ultra and as usual when you do a set up, the device just keeps going through page after page of "recommendations." We already spend too much on entertainment services so I knew I was unwilling to sign up for anything with a fee, and didn't want to try any free trial offers because the free window timeframes were too short. But ROKU recommended a number of channels they said were free (not a trial - free). I said ok to those. Then I was charged for one of them (OAN). ROKU absolutely DID NOT get permission to charge $4.99/mo or ask for my PIN before going forward. Thank goodness my credit card alerted me.
I came to ROKU today thinking "oh, they'll see this clear error and fix it. Then I chatted with a CSR and saw that is not the case and that they are not trained to listen with the goal of understanding but seem trained to just repeat the same thing over and over until you give up (like "you need to set up a PIN to prevent charges") when I have already explained I have a PIN set up, ROKU just didn't ask for it, and further, ROKU actually promoted the channel as 100% free.
Then I came to this community and became increasingly alarmed. Maybe I should return these most recently purchased devices and find another streaming tool because there are thousands of posts here with issue after issue, many about charging with no permission or hacked accounts or unknown HBO accounts appearing on devices. The ROKU responses are the same canned responses over and over. That's alarming.
From what I read, apparently, ROKU will not refund the $5.39 they wrongly took from me, but I am lucky compared to what others here have experienced. I simply cannot afford to start incurring repeat charges of hundreds of dollars per month or having PII compromised as I have seen described in posts on this forum.
Are these issues as widespread and ROKU as nonresponsive and unlikely to take actions to improve/solve the root of these issues as it seems?
