Problem with Activating Lifetime Subscription

[mista_c]

I realise it’s probably a rare occurrence these days but if anybody has managed to transfer and re-activate a lifetime sub in the past week or so, could they report back here? Not so long ago, I purchased from Ebay a Tivo with lifetime sub for a relative, and after the previous owner cancelled their account, I successfully transferred the lifetime sub into my relatives name and then waited for the account to become active. 48 hours passed, and although the Tivo can successfully dialup, it quickly disconnects and the account status remains closed. Tivo’s customer services told me there was some kind of technical issue and had emailed Tivo US, but there was little else they could do.

Its now nearly a week a since the account was supposed to have become active, and after speaking with customer services yet again, they still have no real information on what is going on. I have sent a message to Ozsat yesterday, and he has very kindly forwarded it to Tivo US, but I would be grateful if anybody has any info on this or has any similar past experiences to share.

[Pete77]

Read the below thread and all will be explained:-

www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=392168

However unfortunately its not good news from your point of view and with the benefit of hindsight you should have left the Lifetime Sub registered in the name of the previous owner if you had known of this issue. Of course Tivo do have a short term fix but then it keeps on failing a few weeks later.

We can only hope that they get to the bottom of the problem in the longer run........

[mista_c]

Thanks Pete. I am pretty angry with Tivo UK/ Sky as I did ask them beforehand what I would need to do in order to transfer the lifetime sub over from the previous owner. I did what they told me to do, they reassured me that there wouldn't be any problems whatsoever, but it would appear they were aware of this issue over three months ago...

To the mods: wouldn't it be an idea to place some kind of sticky warning people of this?

[mista_c]

In the thread posted above, it mentions people swapping drives, but I'm not sure if I understand this correctly. The tivo I bought from ebay has a 120gb disk inside but the seller also gave me the original hard disk he had. If I temporarily swap the drives, make a daily call, then swap back again, could this work? I think the seller told me that he lifetime subbed it right from the start.

[mikerr]

No, that won't really help as the serial number is held on the mainboard,
and read from the mainboard at dialup time.

In the meantime, you can however put the disk into your subscribed tivo,
do the dialup on your machine and then swap back.
That will get you the guide data, but its not a permanent solution.