Procedures for Buying and Selling of BTV Receivers - See Post 1

jdevlin said:

Last receiver I bought privately I was not able to activate online. When I called in I was told bought used receivers had to be activated over the phone. Could have just been a one time thing though.

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Hi, I have a different experience than you did. I purchased a second hand receiver off someone privately, all he had to do was call Bell, tell them he was selling a receiver he owns outright.

He gave the serial no, they removed it. I am now told by the seller its removed, I actually tried activating it online myself and it worked like a charm. It was up and running in minutes and not once did I need to speak to the csr.

I don't think you can.

A while back a relative gave me their old Dish network receiver but the bell rep was not able to add the receiver to my account, possibly because it was not in bell's inventory. Secondly, Dish dishes point to different birds in the sky than what bell uses so their receivers are also programmed to look for different birds than what the bell receivers are designed to receive and there is no known way to reprogram a dish receiver to look for 91 and 82 degrees, vs dish 110 and 119 degrees
lastly, im quite sure the answer is no

I bought a previously owned receiver off someone in the past and had no problem activating it, and also found it still had his previous recordings on it. It was not a big deal, I always like to do a fresh start so I formatted the hard drive via the menus and did a full factory reset on it.

Some people prefer to use any purchased equipment as is in the state they bought it, and there are other people like me who wipe it clean and factory reset it before I use it. its a personal preference really.

As for the External Hard Disk Drive with your recordings on it, once you get rid of your receiver, the recordings are useless and cant normally be viewed. I'd format it and use it for computer use instead.