Roku Device Features, Settings & Updates

[BLC]

Every time I attempt to publish a custom welcome message for the Guest Mode it states that it can't be published at this time, please try again later. I've tried on mobile devices as well as a desktop with no luck. Anyone solved this?

Thank you

[shoneinc]

same here. poor/no customer support after they went public.

[renojim]

To be fair, it wasn't any better before they went public.

[ncvfuninthesun]

Is there any information about when this feature might be fixed??

[BillyBobThorton]

It could have something to do with a particular word you are trying to use in your phrase. For example, in my case, the roku wont let me publish the word "service". Should maybe look into this roku.......

[D-Drive]

What is missing is a black list of words and characters

I was unable to save until I removed numbers from the welcoming greeting then everything was good.

try resetting to default.. if that works then you know the system is working. then try just

Hello World

if that works then you know there is an issue with what you are entering, not the functioning of the system

[TXSwimDad]

I've had an open issue for about a month with Roku Technical support regarding this. After quite a bit of ridiculous conversations with them, they finally admitted that they block certain things in the Guest Mode greeting to try to prevent 'scammers'. One thing they block is numbers in the greeting. It looks like they block other words/phrases too. Nothing on their website or in the error message itself indicate that this is an intended feature rather than a website glitch.

[AvsGunnar]

@TXSwimDad 

Unfortunately, scammers that have unwittingly convinced users to pay them to set up their Roku devices will typically lock the device into guest mode (since they normally control the account info) and alert user they need to renew their subscription.

Once again, an unintended consequence of responding to a criminal's actions prevents or limits the legitimate use of a function/feature.

There should be some way that a user should be able to validate whatever info they want to place in this greeting through Roku, but Roku probably does want to assume the risk of someone sneaking something by.  

[TXSwimDad]

@AvsGunnar

I understand their logic leading to the decision; however, in my opinion, the way it is implemented is heavy-handed and the real problem is that Roku isn't giving its legitimate customers any guidance here. In the situation that led me to submitting a ticket to technical support, I was trying to enter a single number in the greeting. It was something as simple as 'Welcome to apartment x!!' on the Rokus in my rental unit. Even worse, I already had an existing Roku in Guest Mode with that message and I was trying to update a brand new Roku with the exact same message. It took multiple rounds of emails to technical support before they said anything about blocking numbers in the messages due to scammers. It should be readily apparent to the casual observer that what I was trying to do doesn't look like anything that could be used to scam someone. I understand blocking sequences of numbers that might look like a phone number, but blocking a single digit with no explanation as to the reason?

Possibly a better way to implement the filter would be to assign weights to certain words/content and then add up the total and if the total weight is greater than a set threshold, the error message is something like "Guest Mode greeting update failed due to blacklisted content. See <url>." which refers the Roku owner to a section of the website that explains the issue.

My two cents.