freesat (bbc/itv) please help

blueye

hello i have an elderly lady client whose freesat box has given up on her, she had a tv guy quote £180 to replace, hes taken the box so i dont know what make it is, she says she does not have a dish which confussed me because i thought you needed a dish?
anyway i had a look at her cables and she has two one for her ariel and the other i guess is from the no existant dish lol, question is could i just buy another box or does she have to get the whole lot replaced ( why the quote was so high) please help, she misses her movies lol

macman

If she does not have a dish, then she could never have got Freesat. So, unless he has 'taken' (why?) both the dish and the box, whatever service she was getting before must have been Freeview via an aerial.
As long as she has a working aerial, all she needs is a TV with built in Freeview, or a Freeview box for an analogue TV. Basic Freeview boxes cost from a tenner and do not require any 'install'-they just plug in.
To get Freesat will require a dish and LNB and a Freesat box.
If you want more specific advice then you need to give more detailed info.

almillar

blueye, we can't answer what device to buy until you find out what this client (she isn't paying you for your technical knowledge I hope!) has for receiving - aerial, dish or both. If it's just a dish, the cables may be 2 feeds for a Freesat (or Sky) recorder. It could be an aerial plus a dish, it could be aerial plus FM for goodness sake! Ideally you'll follow the cable and find out what it's connected to, and get the box back off whatever gangster took it away!

Heinz

blueye wrote: »

hello i have an elderly lady client whose freesat box has given up on her, she had a tv guy quote £180 to replace, hes taken the box so i dont know what make it is, she says she does not have a dish which confussed me because i thought you needed a dish?
anyway i had a look at her cables and she has two one for her ariel and the other i guess is from the no existant dish lol, question is could i just buy another box or does she have to get the whole lot replaced ( why the quote was so high) please help, she misses her movies lol

An elderly lady 'client'?

Are you in the domestic electricals business?

If so, why don't you know whether she has a terrestrial aerial or a dish or both (just looking at the connectors on the cables - 'F' plug(s) = satellite, RF plug = terrestrial - in the lady's home should tell you even withour going outside to look).

Please tell me she's in north Essex - I get so annoyed at cowboys taking advantage like this that I'll volunteer to go to install a new box if she's close by.

whitelabel

maybe he is a gigalo, or a financial advisor, or carer

blueye

im a carer, was too late anyway the guy has been back today and brought her new box which is a freesat box the dish must be up on her roof which is flat so its out of sight.
another old person ripped off, ive had a look at the box online and it only costs £89 so he gave himself £90 to plug it in...nice little earner hay!!

Kurtis_Blue

Two visits @ £45 each, would have needed to allow time on the first job to fault find and we don't know where he came from, doesn't sound to bad.

blueye

could have told her to get one from argos and saved her £75

Kurtis_Blue

Why didn't she buy one from Argos?
No need to bash the tradesman, she needed and requested help she had no TV sounds as if he speedily fixed it and for a reasonable charge.

blueye

if she was given the option to buy her own she would have, she had tv just not all the channels freesat has she still had freeview when the carer pluged her ariel back in for her. most people know they can get these things themselves but there are still some out there who dont, and no i dont think £90 for thirty mins and a total of 12 miles driven is reasonable. sorry.

Kurtis_Blue

blueye wrote: »

if she was given the option to buy her own she would have, she had tv just not all the channels freesat has she still had freeview when the carer pluged her ariel back in for her. most people know they can get these things themselves but there are still some out there who dont, and no i dont think £90 for thirty mins and a total of 12 miles driven is reasonable. sorry.

I can see why you see it that way, but you just don't understand the reality of either a self employed tradesman or a small business.

Oh, and the reason she only had some of the channels was due to a well known fault with the SD grundig/bush/goodmans boxes, hence why they are on sale at argos