Help!Tivo wont honour Lifetime Sub!

I transferred my Lifetime Sub last week with no problem.

Maybe you got a poor agent who didn't know what they were doing.

I'd ring back and try again.

 

There've been several threads on transferring subs, that range from, the sub is for the lifetime of the TiVo, so if yours dies the sub dies with it. To, as you've found, the previous owner of the TiVo you've bought has to cancel his subscription, before you can transfer yours. As ericd121 says, it can depend on the agent you get on the phone

 

If they mean the new one you've bought has an active sub on it, then why not just use the new one?

 

Boucher, what location are you in the uk???

 

I don't think Boucher has ever explained if the Tivo he has owned for 14 months had its Lifetime Subscription altered to his name when he bought it from the previous owner. That would have included the previous owner notifying Tivo they had sold it and were allowing it to be transferred to the new owner and the new owner then transferring it to Tivo.

If the original owner has never transferred the Lifetime Sub to you then you have a problem Boucher as Tivo will only deal with the registered owner who can give the registered owner's name, address, postcode and telephone number (and ideally account number although they don't usually seem to insist on this). If you can't provide this they won't deal with you regarding transferring the Lifetime Sub.

If the sub was never transferred to your name when you bought it then in effect it is only for the lifetime of the Tivo you bought unless you can persuade the first owner to contact Tivo now to have the sub transferred to you.

Also what is wrong with your Lifetime Subbed Tivo? if the hard drive has merely failed you can replace it with a working one such as the one in the secondhand Tivo you bought on Ebay. Or you can buy new pre-formatted drives at www.tivocentral.co.uk, www.tivoheaven.co.uk and www.tivoland.com or replace it yourself using the guide at www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/upgrade3.html

 

It is my understanding that a lifetime subscription is for the unit itself, not the owner. The lifetime sub can be transferred with the unit if you sell it but you cannot transfer it from one unit to another unit. That's why the old, Phillips DSR6000 which is 5 years old I am still using even though I'd like to have a new, Series 2 unit.

 

Technically true, but in practice in the UK transfers have been allowed, possibly because there is no longer an official repair option here.

Transferring a lifetime is possible without involving customer services, but as the same technique can be used for cloning TiVos you won't find it discussed openly here.

 

Probably a blown modem.

Have you tried disabling the modemtest program on any of the drives?

 

Sounds like progress then. So long as he is the original owner he should have no trouble informing Tivo he has sold the unit and is transferring the sub to you as the new owner (or whatever the process is as Tivo CS will tell you). However if he is a second owner and there was another owner before him (probably unlikely) and he doesn't know the details for them and is not the current registered owner then there would still be problems.

Once the Tivo Sub is transferred in to your name you shouldn't have too much difficulty if you ask for a Tivo CS supervisor and explain about the broken Tivo and having asked around here and it appearing to be a blown modem and hence you buying the other unit due to there being no repair service for Tivos any more.

The other process for transferring subs we cannot reveal here in any case requires network card access and if you had that you would no longer care about your blown modem as fitting a Cachecard or Turbonet card would then provide your Tivo with replcement internet access to the data and so it would work again without a modem. You would also have access to Tivoweb, remote access via your mobile phone and so and so forth.

See www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo for more information on Tivoweb and Cachecard etc. Also check out the Wikipedia entry for Tivoweb.

 

TiVo used to provide a paid swap-out service after your warranty had expired. With that, they would automatically transfer the sub to the replacement TiVo. Given that they had to cancel that service when they sold off all of their spare stock, they are really obliged to transfer the sub to a replacement that you have sourced.

 

As long as they believe you are the legitimate current owner of the Lifetime Sub.............

 

I personally don't think they are obligated at all. The lifetime is for the life of the unit it was applied to.

I think the way swap out units within warrenty could be ammended on the systems the tivo/sky support use are still in place, you sometimes get a nice customer service member of staff who will do it, but as I read the lifetime T&C's people who are getting the service numbers for lifetime exchanged are very lucky.

 

I think its more a question of them being members of the original specialist Tivo CS team since the early days who know how to do it. Wheeras some of the people who now cover the Tivo line mainly come from a Sky, Sky+ and Sky HD support background.

As no new Tivo has been sold in ages the only thing they really need to support now in business terms is updating credit card details for the monthly subscribers (otherwise they lose money).

As they can't repair Tivos but they are willing to keep running the UK Tivo service I really can't see what they have to lose by agreeing to transfer the Lifetime Subs. I think with determination and a number of calls anyone with a Lifetime Sub who can quote the original owner, name address and phone number and is still the original owner will eventually manage to get it transferred.

However if you are not the original registered owner Tivo CS are bound to be more cautious, especially if you also want a change of owner name and address at the same time as you want the Lifetime Sub transferred between boxes. They are after all duty bound to prevent what might seems as though it could be an attempt at fraudulent Tivo subscription transfer......

 

Maybe the £200 of a new lifetime sub to the 2nd unit???? Or £10PCM???

Sky get a fee for providing the CS from tivo, not a percentage of the subscriptions.

I am sure if TiVo Inc over the pond knew that Sky Customer service staff are swapping lifetime between units that are not under the manufacturers warranty they would be most upset as they are defrauding tivo inc out of revenue.

This method of transferring lifetime between units outside the manufacturers warranty is a definite NO NO in the states..

 

In your second para you show why the comment in your first para makes no sense.

I very much doubt it as I believe Tivo service is being continued in the UK for mainly sentimental and corporate reputations reasons and it is not expected to be profitable in it its own right.

As Tivo did not maintain official repair facilities for Thomson S1 Tivos and Tivo owners are entitled to expect their Lifetime Subbed units to be repaired then the only way to cover their embarassment at that situation is to allow subs to be swapped on to good units.

As Tivo Inc also know that the S1 units are not secure against Service Number hacking (unlike later Tivo models) I very much doubt that they worry about a Lifetime Sub being transferred between UK S1 Tivo models for entirely non fraudulent reasons.