Recordable boxes

[Brucemeister5]

@DarrenDev If you think that there is currently no push to move customers from BT to EE, then I’m afraid that my experience when I phoned to renew our broadband and tv recently was rather different, and resulted in me hanging up and putting in a formal complaint. EE mobile is also pushed at every opportunity, even when you’ve called about something else entirely, and this has been happening for over 3 years!

[DarrenDev]

By "no push" I mean that no-one is bring proactively contacted, to switch from BT Broadband to EE Broadband.
We stopped selling BT Mobile a while ago, so yes - there's a push to move customers across to EE Mobile. You can still have EE Mobile as a BT Broadband customer though.
At renewal time, you'll be offered the chance to move to EE. I'm not aware of it being mandated though - I'm sorry to hear that you've had a bad experience with your renewal.

Is there a reason that you don't want to move across?

[Brucemeister5]

No worries. We’ve renewed our broadband & tv now after being offered a deal that was too good to refuse on both from Executive Complaints.

We can’t get FTTP in our village, and although we have an Alt Net here, we are happy with our 51 Mbps as it meets our needs. We’re not interested in the Apple TV or free multi room boxes on new EE, and have been very satisfied with the Pro tv box. We are staying out of contract on BT Mobile until we are told otherwise as it still has free roam like at home.

[RussK]

@DarrenDev 

Hi Darren, 

I'm going to have to disagree with you on one point.

There was a product called “TV Everywhere with Extra Box”. It is still showing on my bill to this day and I have 2 recordable boxes. It was on offer pre-2018 (I can’t remember exactly when).

I am an ex-BT employee, but am unable to say whether this product was only for us or for all customers.

Presumably my recontracting over the years has kept the product alive.

@kim7 - check your bill to see whether there is a product listed like the one mentioned above.

[DarrenDev]

@RussK "TV Everywhere with Extra Box" is just the regular extra box subscription, and should have resulted in you being sent a Z4 in 2018.  I can't go back that far to see why you were sent a recordable box, but it wasn't standard - employee orders were manual back then, so could have been a mistake.

[Midnight_Voice]

@RussK 

I found this 2014 posting, which bears out what you say, and would confirm it wasn’t just an employee-only offer.

https://vodzilla.co/blog/vod-news/tv-everywhere-bt-tv-buy-to-keep-films-now-available-on-other-devic...

I think the designation YouView+ denotes a recording box.

I am also assuming the journalist posting had their facts straight 😛

[DarrenDev]

"TV Everywhere" was the name for the apps we launched in 2014 for mobile devices (later followed by apps for Apple TV, Fire TV, Samsung TV, and Chromecast).
All YouView boxes were known as "YouView+" boxes (to align with the "Vision+" name for the previous boxes). The Z4 (non recordable) box launched as part of that multiroom offer in 2014.

[RussK]

Hi @DarrenDev,

It was prior to 2018, more likely to be between 2014 and 2016. I don’t recall the Z4.

I don’t think that it was a mistake, because at some point between having the extra box and now, I’ve had them all replaced due to faults. Unless that was a fortunate mistake for me! 😁

[DarrenDev · Accepted solution]

It's not a mistake that would ever have been corrected - a box swap would always swap for equal or better.
I tell you what ... just to close this pointless topic down, I'll correct my previous statement:

BT has never offered 2 recordable options for BT TV, and it's still not available for EE TV. If you had BT TV before Dec 2019 and then renewed your box afterwards, the previous box would have been yours to keep and a new box would be offered on loan. Only one box could be used for subscription content at a time. If you took out a multiroom subscription at the time, a Z4 non-recordable box would have been offered - this is now replaced with the TV Box Mini. Some users may have received a second recordable box by mistake many years ago, however this was never a standard product offering, and this hasn't changed as a result of the move to EE TV.

[zulu17]

Upon further research back in October 2016 I note that the BT Consumer Price Guide does say

“TV Everywhere with Extra Box is a multi-room subscription and requires a second set-top box. If your main set-top box is a YouView + Box, you can choose to take either a YouView + or YouView Box as your second set-top box. If your main set-top box is a YouView Box, you can only take another YouView Box as your second set-top box.”

So it does appear that a pricing option for two Recordable devices did exist back then. How long Bt actively marketed/sold that option is unclear and most posts on the forum from that period will have been archived. (Having a price point doesn’t necessarily imply that a package was actively promoted.)