[Pete77]

It depends who you get to speak to at customer services, I managed to get my lifetime sub transferred from my Tivo (which was beyond repair) to a spare unsubbed machine without any fuss

Ask to speak to a supervisor if you don't succeed with the first person on the Tivo 0870 line.

Many of the Sky Tivo customer service staff are very nice and really appreciate the specialist niche nature of Tivo as a product and also how informed the Tivo customer base is compared to the idiot customers they mainly deal with on Sky boxes.

However there seem to be one or two Jobsworths on the Tivo line who only want to do the minimum.

I would say you need to be unlucky to hit someone who refuses to transfer the sub on a broken Tivo rather than lucky to find someone who will.

 

[Pete77]

IIRC this has been discussed before. Basically, they won't transfer onto an active monthly subbed box, only onto a dormant one.

Presumably this is because they will lose the revenue on the subbed box, whereas on a dormant box, they may never see any new revenue, so they allow it on the grounds that they are no longer able to offer a repair service on your lifetime box.

Can't any currently monthly subbed box be turned in to a dormant box simply by the original monthly subbed customer closing the account on it with Tivo CS immediately before they sell it to you?

Or are you saying they will only transfer a Lifetime Sub on to one of the handful of Tivo boxes out there that are Account Status 1 - Never Set Up?

I think you are merely saying the account needs to be Closed first. If you buy a secondhand box that somebody has been paying the monthly sub on from Ebay it surely seems highly unlikely anyway that they will not have Closed the account before the send it you.

 

[Pete77]

Which makes a strange kind of sense. Historically,lifetime transfers were supposed to be from broken box to replacement box. Why would the replacement box already have a sub?

Ultimately its down to what their Tivo computer customer service system will let them do. Obviously the brighter and more helpful Tivo advisers are going to point out they can close the account on the non subbed Tivo to make this possible.

Generally people will buy a secondhand Tivo with a closed monthly sub account off Ebay to transfer their broken Lifetime Sub to so the problem won't arise. The problem only arises when people buy a Tivo with a Lifetime Sub that is physically defective and then try and transfer that Lifetime Sub to their own existing working but previously monthly subbed Tivo that they haven't yet closed down the monthly subscription on.