Ebay Tivos Not able to activate

This has come up before. They're good for parts only, excluding the motherboard which is worthless.

 

I think there's a lesson to be learned here. If you're buying a used Tivo get the serial number and ensure yourself the account is in good standing prior to buying. I bought mine from eBay and it's all good.

Marc

 

You should be able to activate the two clear units and the two other keep for parts. Hope you did not pay too much for them. We all have multiple units in the closet to scavenge for parts. You now have two...

 

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Or swap te RID chip if you are good with a soldering gun.

 

I know the issue has been argued to death, but I still fail to understand why Directv ties the unpaid account to the unit and not to the account owner. Seems like a good business decision would be to release the hold on the unit so they could begin to collect money on it again.. ah well.

 

Default on my account payment....

Create a new account, with the same equipment... under a different name...
Ect...

While the vast majority of people are honest... the bad-apples have caused issues.

 

I see the logic, Earl... too bad it has to be that way for the honest customers.

 

They can't use the access card for this?

 

No - a replacement access card is too easy to get.

 

Would it be possible to pay off the old DirecTV bill to allow the hardware to be used again?

Assuming it is closer to $100 than to $2000.00.

-Mike

 

Good question. Theoretically, you'd think this could work, but I have to wonder if it's worth the expense. If it was more than $50 I'd walk away. You may find that DirecTV has no process to have you pay someone else's past-due balance and they'd prefer you to get a new non-TiVo box anyway. It would be interesting for the OP to pose this question to DirecTV and see what the answer is.

 

Anyone in the Billing dept. can process the payment for the op on any account, it doesnt have to be there own account, they just have to be willing to make the payment for the deadbeat that decided he didnt need to pay his balance.

 

I guess I had thought the access card was like a SIM chip in cell phones, apparently not...

 

Here's a question, what should I do with 2 DTV Tivos I no longer need? Don't care about parts, etc. One is SD, one is an HD 250. I was thinking of selling via eBay or Craigslist without the access cards, but this thread makes me wonder if it's worth the possible headache in the future if someone tries to highjack my old accounts or identity.

Is there an area here on the TivoCommuntiy for buying and selling?

 

If you own the equipment and it's not leased from DirecTV, and you properly deactivate them from your DirecTV account, then there's very little risk to you selling them via eBay or Craigslist. Don't include the access card. And be prepared to provide prospective buyers with the "Receiver ID Number" from your equipment so that they can verify with DirecTV that they'll be able to activate it on their account. Providing that information will not let anyone hijack your account.

 

Thanks. I wasn't going to include the cards, though it seems that a lot of the auctions do include them. Seems fishy to me since DTV will send you a new card and I thought that topic we aren't supposed to discuss was no longer an issue.

 

That usually works. However, It didn't work for me. The seller shipped a different unit than the one he showed in the pictures. He advertised it as parts only, so I was stuck. Seemed like a lousy thing to do anyway. It was a really nice clean unit. When I called Direct the only thing they would tell me was that I couldn't activate the unit. I got passed along the chain 3 or 4 times before someone would tell me that it was in collections. It all seemed very mysterious.

 

I don't think you would be able to pay the account off because DirecTV will not discuss anything about the account that is in bad standing. I went through this same thing and they could not tell me anything.

 

Plus what others have said, directv want us to move away from the combo boxes with Tivo and into their leased boxes anyway. This way, they can lock us into 2 year contracts.