My V+ installation and problems

parpenbhwarg · 19-02-2007, 16:17

After upgrading my account a couple of weeks ago upgraded to Virgin's standard VIP, the installation was booked for last Thursday (very small wait time!)

The total installation time was around 2 hours and the engineer was an absolute gem. He pulled out all the stops to ensure I was fully satisfied with the installation, conducted himself exceptionally and didn't cut any corners despite overrunning his allocated (and presumably all he was paid for) 1 hour 42 minutes.

Obviously he was going to be late for the next job and had the decency to ring the customer, inform them and provide a revised estimated arrival time. Fantastic customer service.

Moving on to the actual box and my problems. Ever since the V+ box was installed, I have never received any more than a very small selection of channels.

When the box is booted, a message states something about not being authorised and have been told that this is due to the smartcard and box not paired up. This STILL has not been resolved and apparently has worked its way to third line or third level, is that bad or good?

The online light is also flashing constantly but after reading through the other threads I guess this will be fixed once the card/box are paired.

My Samsung box on Thursday was operating with all of the XL channels which I was receiving before but no Sky Movies or Sports. I called customer services and they did get all the channels working, but since Saturday the box now only has the same number of channels as the V+ box and tells me the same message - You are not authorised to use blah blah blah.

How long does it take a smartcard and box to be paired up and how long will it take for this third level/line support to call me? I am worried that they will try and contact me whilst I am not at home and won't be able to get the problem sorted!

freakgirl · 19-02-2007, 19:10

Apperently this seems to be happening to a lot of people who have both boxes

gangus · 19-02-2007, 20:20

hi
if the computer is working with no delays it takes no more than 5 mins for the signal to pair the card and box this assumes the installer does it while at property the biggest delay i have come accross has been around 5hrs when the computer as gone down and it as had to clear a back log i would try to ring again you might get lucky and speak to someone that can fix it
gangus

parpenbhwarg · 20-02-2007, 14:15

Unfortunately I have still not received a phone call nor do either of my boxes have any channels other than the very basic ones.

My friend who had V+ installed on the same day as me (last Thursday) had the same problems that I have currently, but he has now had everything sorted. The only thing he has done differently to me is instead of putting up with "wait for this to be done" and "we'll pass this on to second line, third line etc.", the customer service representative booked him an engineer as they told him this would be necessary.

The engineer visited his house yesterday and got everything working within half an hour. He told my friend that the original installation was not done correctly (box not initialised or something?) and that the silver boxes were a pile of cack.

He proceeded in swapping the silver TVDrive box for a black V+ branded box which did not suffer from the online light continually flashing and was up and running within half an hour. Apparently the original silver box was unable to acquire an IP address yet this black box was and that this IP address problem is probably why mine isn't working.

Surely there is hardly any difference between the silver and black boxes (in terms of hardware inside) and therefore it cannot be completely down to that. I mean, there must be thousands of these silver boxes in use currently and they can't all be cream crackered!

I'm convincing myself at the moment that it's probably that the engineer has not initialised my box properly, or there is something simple that third line can deal with. Apparently the signal sent to my box from the second line staff failed though, here's hoping...

---------- Post added at 14:15 ---------- Previous post was at 13:54 ----------

Argh I'm about ready to blow my top off! Virgin just called my house (know this as it was 08454540000 on 1471), the missus answered the phone and despite staying on the line for 30 seconds or so, the line was just plain dead!

Was that the scarce third line trying to contact me or a sales call? Argh!