Call from BEV to "inventory" my receivers

  • Thread starter Thread starter I_Want_My_HDTV
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By others, you mean *c subs?
They HAVE/Had a Home Away From Home (Cottage/RV) program, but me thinks Bell and some providers figured this gave them some unfair advantage and got the CRTC to rule against the practice.

Seems if you can't win on merit alone, you have to get the feds to brow beat the competition.

I think the argument was,
if you had a home phone service their, you'd get a new number, a new account and a new bill, same as gas, electricty, cable, etc.

Legally, you should get a new seperate account, myself, I'd just hook it up and don't ask, don't tell.
They already get enough of our hard earned dollars.
 
Agent ExpressV, don't take this as an attack because it is not intended that way, but I hope that is your opinion and not your employers'. I would hate to think that BEV believes the onus of a secure industry has fallen into the hands of their competition and the CRTC. BEV has a problem and they have to clean it up. If not, they will be responsible for the demise of the Cdn broadcast industry.

Fee-for-carriage rules (that the CRTC did not implement, ironically partially at the urging of the cable co's) would have cleaned this up. The individual broadcaster's would have refused to pay the rate card of the cable companies, knowing that carriage on BEV gets them more exposure than BEV's subscriber base allows them to charge. This would have made the CRTC force BEV to clean up or loose their license, due to unfair competition.
 
No... SAT team used to be in Toronto, but they moved it over to Montreal.

The only time your call might be transferred to the Indian call center (cause they finally admitted that there is one) is when you call for technical problems. Sometimes they will take other type of call, but only when there is an overflow, which doesn't happen too much lately
 
If they spot a Grow Op, should they report that? A body? If you invite an installer into your house, and they catch you doing something illegal, the owner should expect to be reported. I'm sure that Cable installers are required to report illegal setups if they find them. Whether they do, or not, is another story.

-Mike
 
And even beyond that, if they would only supply receivers to their customers which dial out when they are supposed to so they don't get phone calls from some dumb arse at Bell from "that" department with a chip on their shoulder and without the ability to speak either of the official languages.
 
If Bell does this, Bell should have to compensate the customer for their time/effort. IF a person has to take 30 min of their time away to soothe the mothership Bell, then Bell should have to compensate!! 30min of my time @ $40/hr pay @ 1.5x (overtime/off duty pay scale), then Bell owes me $30 for WASTING MY TIME!!

Now, if ALL the customers thought that way, maybe something would be done!! ;)
 
Nonetheless, the terms and conditions of service, which you are bound to as long as you subscribe, with or without a term contract, clearly state Bell has the right to terminate, without notice, any account they deem (without appeal or proof) to be in violation of their current rules. You are REQUIRED, by these terms, to have each receiver attached, full-time, to a working wireline phone system.

There is a simple remedy if you disagree with the terms: cancel your service. Just because it is "inconvenient" to plug in doesn't give you the right to arbitrarily ignore your agreed to terms of service. (You agree, btw, every time you you pay your bill in full.)



Yup, genuine piracy is a much larger threat to Canadian TV and Bell ExpressVu than "cottage" or, worse, "suspected cottage" users who actually pay their bill in full each month.

No wonder the company is up for sale.
 
yeah, Bell gotta realize that PHONES do exist, and your friends are only a phone call away!! LoL!
 
I fail to see how that would put an end to account sharing. It will reduce it, but not eliminate it. I have 4 dishes installed to support my legit receievers. This would certainly inconvenience me more than a phone once every 2 years. If a dish goes out of alignment in the winter I simply switch to the spare until the weather is better. In the summer, I take a receiver out on the patio (where there is another dish nearby - therefore another LNB). LNBs get swapped around once in a while as I relocate a dish or change between 18", 20" and 24" dishes.


ltldevl - My comments were not directed at you or your particular issue. You do seem to have a legitimate issue and there may potentially be a larger problem at EVs end of things. The comments about personal attacks in particular were directed at others in this thread.

Still, I personally don't see it as a big deal having to provide the info every now and then. I am happy to see they are doing something to protect their interests.
 
Yes something would happen, we would all get cut off....I am sure that would be the Express Vu Policy.

I agree, in theory, with your proposal.

The next time I get the call, which is already overdue, I believe, I will ask how much I will be compensated before I start walking round the house with pen and paper in hand to record the precious numbers for them.

It will be interesting to hear the response......
 
We got this call the other day, they left a message.
I tried to call when I got home, had to wait on hold for 20+ minutes before I hung up. They called back the next day & woke up my wife & daughter. My wife ran around to the 2 receivers that were hooked up & had to read off the codes.
She forgot about my 3rd receiver which isn't hooked up as I replaced it w/ a PVR. She called back later to give them the code for that one & the drone who answered the phone said (I love this): "we can only do 1 account "upgrade" per day". If they want the code for the 3rd receiver they can call me. I'm not calling them.
 
No reason why can't pursue both. (Not that they are any good are either, mind you.)

That is like saying, police should go after murders before speeders. Now, certainly more effort going after major crimes, but doesn't mean the other crimes get a free ride.
 
Look at it this way, companies who sell chemicals for home use put symbols on bottles to tell you if the chemical in their bottle is poison. But, in some cases, they still have to put words like "Do not drink" or "Do not consume" because the words poison aren't strong enough. In many cases, a few individuals probably sued the company selling the chemical because they didn't say the chemical wasn't safe to drink even in small doses. Now the company has gone farther to do everything they can to prevent accidents by actually stating the chemical isn't safe for consumption at all.

Bell is NOT doing everything it can and in the long run, costs the tax payer.

I know the above point is a stretch but under the same umbrella. The point is, companies like Bell need to spend more time and money preventing people from stealing their signal then checking to see if their paying customers are not receiving more channels then they should or from more than one location using one account. Does a company who sells a cleaning chemical need to call their consumers to see if they are drinking their product instead of using it to clean or how about making explosives with it? Of course not!
 
I think after a few tries to contact you by phone they would just cut off the receiver. Legitimate setups will usually contact Bell quickly when the TV is out.
 
It doesn't require either. Decent management, average programmers and typical web servers will get the job done. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out where the problem lies. :rolleyes:

The whole cottage/home thing is a farce anyway. What's to stop someone from just taking a receiver to the cottage every weekend or for the summer? The likelihood of getting caught is very low and all you need to do is take the receiver home to get it reactivated. I've had the occasional receiver unplugged and disconnected for months and never got called. I'm sure those didn't "phone home." They could have been anywhere and EV couldn't tell. What is EV going to do, "unauthorize" it? That happens automatically on its own. When I plug it back in, I get a rehit and everything is fine.

Receivers at the home and "cottage"? Just swap them once in awhile. (A bit of a PITA but no worse than the alternatives.) Chances are they will phone home enough to not raise a flag. The only solution is to limit customers to one receiver or make them disable automatically if not connected to the correct phone line. That would be much more effective than the current method.
 
Do you think you are not getting the call, because you are receiving an employee discount, and employess of bell would NEVER hack/cheat/steal their own company?
Maybe if bell offered a courtesy PPV movie, or credit, for the hassle of being questioned on the location of the boxes, we as customers would feel less criminal?
I think I would be more receptive to a call to inventory my equipment, if the caller apologized for the inconvience, and would like to offer me a credit, or movie for the hassle, instead of saying they need the info, because they need to verify where the boxes are
 
Funny, I know of people who have receivers in different locations (Edmonton - Winnipeg - Toronto), and they have NEVER received a call, not in the 4+ years they've been doing their little schtick.
 
The call you receive is most probably from our Multiple Receivers Verication (MRVP)... they call clients that we have suspicions might use receivers in 2 locations at the same time and verify if all receivers are in the same location.

For you question about our cottage policy:
BEV will let you bring one of your receivers to you cottage, but you have to call us to let us know before you got so that we could deactivate it. But the home and the cottage receivers can not be activated ta the same time. You have to call us back when you return so that we deactivate the receiver that will stay at the cottage and reactivate the one home. If we found that you have both home and cottage active at the same time we will turn off all the receivers that we can not verify until we can verify them
If you want both locations active at the same time then you would have to have 2 seperate accounts.

This policy as been there since BEV was sued by our competitor Videotron for deloyal competition. They won their case and now BEV as to follow that policy (At least thios is what they told us in training)
 
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