Probably a silly question i accept, but is it worth picking one up ?

There's a possibility that my mum's freesat card has gone missing (most likely thanks to me...) and I don't really want to be on the hook for £25 odd quid for a brand new replacement, so would there be any major issues if i got one off eBay ?

something like this for example ?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Freesat-UK...item20f405659f

It might be registered to the wrong BBC and ITV region so you wouldn't get them on 101/103 (I think the other BBC regions are in the 900s) if that matters to you.

Also, buying from Sky obligates them to give you a free replacement if they decide to replace all the cards (as has been speculated for some time), buying from eBay won't do that.

There may also be an issue with PIN numbers?

There is a very strong risk that it will not last very long - there is a new issue of cards due in the very near future and Sky will only replace FOC cards purchased direct from then and only to the address the original was sent to.

You don't need a card in a Sky box to get all the channels on a Freesat box and more channels as well. If you imagine it will let you record it won't. It;'s a total scam and in any case it's illegal, the card actually belongs to Sky anyway.

Someone should contact e-bay.

thanks all. I'm hoping we can find the card at some point. her ITV has reverted to Central at the moment instead of London which is a pain.

I'll have to bite the bullet and get a new one if we can't find it I suppose

ITV London should be on all Sky boxes at a higher number channel as it's the only one with subtitles (not having one don't know the channel number), you could use favourites to make it easily available. Otherwise use add channels to add transponder 10758 V DVB-S QPSK 22000 5/6 and watch using other channels.

EDIT

Try channel 131

That is ITV +1, ITV London is 973

Surely you'd be better off spending a little extra and replace the Sky box with a Freesat box?
Seems a bit daft paying £25 odd on a new card.

I'll answer both of you as it's kind of relevant

The reason i'm in this situation in the first place is that my mum being my mum, at 75, is very set in her ways and doesn't really work well with technology so she's been used to the old pace box and the original all-blue sky epg for many years.

She knows the layout of the sky remote control and knows how to access her favourites list and that's that.

I picked up a sky hd multiroom box before christmas, mainly because it was HD capable and she has a HD capable television and i swapped the pace box out with this multiroom box.

to cut a long story short, she couldn't get on with the new menu and declared it 'complicated' so i was asked (or instructed ) to swap the boxes back and i think i've returned the multiroom box to the cash converters i bought it from with her freesat card in it.

actually manually entering the channel number or even, god forbid, going to the other channels list to pick up london itv would also be complicated and would cause a great deal of consternation and i really just want a quiet life

They are not freesat cards. Freesat does not need a card (clue free).. They are sky cards to regionalise the EPG and add 6 extra channels that most people don't want.

If you want to be pedantic, the product Sky sells is "Freesat from Sky" and so they could be described as "freesat cards", and the fact that a channel is free does not mean it doesn't need a card (see the old days of FTV BBC/ITV/CH4 which were encrypted but any current card could decrypt, regardless of subscription)

Quite why Sky even bothers, I don't know, because you can't record (which to me seems a bit pointless - if the point is to keep a Sky box plugged in and to force people to see channels they can't watch, to try to get them to sign up, it's not going to happen when it's just going to be chucked out in favour of a Freesat box that can record)

It's mostly historical isn't it? - Sky did FreesatfromSky to try and thwart Freesat success and get free sat viewers onto a platform where they could easily 'upgrade' to subscription channels as they had the box and card all ready in use.

The only reason now is for regionlisation of channels I'd have thought

Not at all - FSFS was launched on the orders of the government (I've never found out if it was bribery or blackmail ) - in order to facilitate DSO. It considerably predated Freesat.

If Sky had wanted to thwart Freesat, it would have been absolutely trivial - all they had to do was allow Sky+ recording without subscription - then there would have never been any need for Freesat (particularly as Freesat PVR's weren't available until a VERY long time after launch).

However, 'recent' explanations that have come to light about the reason for the Sky+ subscription charge probably means they couldn't have done it for tax reasons. At the time though Sky's position was that Freesat wasn't the slightest 'threat' to them, and so it has proven - they don't compete in any way, and Sky obviously aren't interested in 'customers' who don't pay them money