December 1st 2020: cannot log into NOW account viua our brand new LG Smart TV

[Anonymous User]

I do get weary of witless IT departments that couldn't be relied upon to open an envelope, still less manage anything technological.

Back in February 2015 there's a post on this forum about how after attempting 10 times to log into that person's NOW TV account via a new LG TV set, all the subscriber kept getting was an on screen message saying the username and/or password are not recognised.

In that topic thread NOW TV responds that it is aware of the problem and is dealing with it.

Remember: we're talking the second month of the year 2015.

Well it's now the first day of the 12th month of 2020, and our new LG Smart TV is unpacked, connected to the mains, and we're attempting to use the NOW facility. We already have a NOW TV/ Roku stick which was in use until last night. The stick is NOT plugged in to the LG TV because that'd be daft.

We want to access our apps, including YouTube, but are inclined to think they're accessible only via the Roku stick and not via whatever fancy footwork is going on betwixt LG and NOW.

Eithher way, we're in the ludicrous situation of being told by NOW that it doesn't recognise our username and/or password a entered onto the LG TV's screen. . . as if that's out fault, this despite the reality that the user name and password, which take a small eternity to key in, are exactly as entered into the log-in screen to access our NOW account from the desktop PC which I'm currently using to pen this note.

Surely, after five YEARS, NOW TV has worked out that something's wrong, somewhere, with the process of logging in to a customer account from a Smart TV,and that the fault is NOW TV's responsibility,not at thed hard-pressed user who keeps being told their username/password "is not recognidsed".

Amateurism gets no more amateurish than being told by an online enterprise that "your username/password is not recognised" by way of attempting to hide the fact that "sorry, our IT is pretty darn hopeless and we've no idea how to put even simple things right. Give us 5 years and, well, maybe. . ."

[Saint1976]

@Anonymous User I have 2 LG TV's and both have logged in fine so that would indicate that it's not a wide spread issue that can be put at NowTV's door.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of stuff that can be improved by NowTV but saying this is a 5 year old problem without solution isn't correct.

"We already have a NOW TV/ Roku stick which was in use until last night. The stick is NOT plugged in to the LG TV because that'd be daft."

Not really. I use NowTV boxes on my LG TV's as there's more functionality.

"We want to access our apps, including YouTube, but are inclined to think they're accessible only via the Roku stick..."

LG TV's have a YouTube app.

[ukbobboy]

@Saint1976  @Anonymous User 

Hi Saint

I'm not an LG Smart TV user, I have a Samsung Smart TV instead,  but even I find Pottle's assertion, of a 5 year continuous problem, pretty  much "out there".  Also, saying that he no longer wants to use his Roku Stick smacks of "cutting off your nose to spite your face".

You see like you, I have also plugged my Roku 3 into my TV which has now become invaluable because Now TV is currently having problems with their app working on LG and Samsung TVs, i.e. a black screen with "Sorry, Now TV is currently unavailable" written across it.

Besides, no tech works properly all the time, so it makes sense to have a backup in place wherever possible, and right now my Roku 3 is my working backup. 

Sorry Pottle, your position just seems illogical.

UK Bob

[Anonymous User]

Thanks for the spectacularly useless advice given in response to my OP.

I'm as well aware that tech doesn't work all the time as I am of the existence throughout UK business and industry of incompetent tecchies who far from being God's gift to IT have difficulty multiplying 2 x 2.

The post which finds my position "illogical" is patently absurd, seeing that the selfsame post acknowledges that NOW TV has a problem working with an LG TV, the very issue I was, logically, talking about.

As to my reference to the past 5 years, it was a  quick search of this so-called Community forum looking for any similar experience to mine that led to my discovery of the February 2015 post from a NOW customer with exactly the same issue I've experienced today. One would've thought that if the problem had been solved 5 years ago, there'd be no reason to keep the post still confusingly on record.

The LG TV we have just had delivered seems fairly OK-ish, the "Magic" remote control (ah! How twee these manufacturers are) anything but magical. We obviously have a learning curve to follow, either that or send the TV back.

As to having a 'back-up', amazingly, having owned a PC since 1989, I'm actually aware of elementary commonsense but having paid for a Roku stick and now a Smart TV, I can't for the life of me see why I would need to have the Roku stick occupying one of that TV's  parsimonious assortment of HDMI slots. Nor was I  criticising Roku or LG when I mused on the whereabouts of the YouTube app: we found it on the LG's screen, eventually, so no problems there.

In closing, thanks for the constructive advice based on the collective expertise and experience of this thread's smugly insightful respondents. How glad I am to have made the effort to obtain enlightenment sufficient to appreciate that I should always have a backup, that any tech can go wrong, but that as in this case nothing has gone wrong at NOW TV's end of things the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that's my fault for being a moron incapable of accurately inputting a username and password.

[Anonymous User]

Well the same is happening to me, when you spend £1500 on tv and one of the deciding factors in your purchasing decision is that it the TV has the Nowtv app installed and then you find that Now tv won't let you log in,  when at then same time you can log in on your PC,  is pretty damned ######! Not a problem for Nowtv because you can't contact them to raise the issue... Really, really p...d off.

[gavs82008]

@Anonymous User 
What TV did you purchase? 

As for contacting Now TV. You can jump onto Live chat 

https://help.nowtv.com/article/how-to-submit-a-complaint
Make sure to click “chat online” in the green box underneath ‘chat to an advisor’. Stay clear of “chat quicker” in the pink box as this is the bot.

There is also the customer service email

 

[Anonymous User]

Thanks, i'll try it

[Saint1976]

@Anonymous User thanks for the completely unnecessary abuse. There's a number of possible solutions in several threads but people get so wound up in having a rant they forget to actually ask if there's a solution. Any way, here's one of the suggested solutions. If you have a password with special characters you'll need to change your password to one without them - only letters and numbers.

 

[Anonymous User]

You have 2 LG TV's so its not a widespread issue..? Your a statistician quite clearly (just joking, your obviously not)

If the problem is first identified 5 years ago and someone still experiences it in 2020 then the problem clearly still exits, it obviously has not been resolved (I's struggling here not to call you a moron).

Why waste anyone's time with your utterly useless response? It's a good job breathing is a reflex rather than something we learn otherwise I fear you'd have died a long time ago.  

[RoyB]

@Anonymous User @Anonymous User 

While happily agreeing with you about some of the spectacularly useless advice you have been given, you cannot assume that because a problem you have has the same symptoms as one reported five years ago, that it has remained unsolved ever since then. And nor can you even assume that these identical symptoms have the same root cause.

In fact, that you can only find one report, and it is from five years ago, speaks volumes; if this problem was prevalent, we would have had many, many reports of it, but this has not been the case.

And if you think that maybe LG users aren’t very vocal, count the reports that came in when NowTV stopped supporting the NetCast OS, even though this was announced well in advance, and affected no LG sets from 2015 onwards.

You would also be wrong to assume that postings get deleted from this Community by reason of age, or when problems are solved; the only ones that get deleted are the ones that are spam, or are abusive.

Anyway, I hope you feel better for a good vent, even if some of it struck me as rather uncalled for, and that at least one of the constructive suggestions you have been pointed to will resolve it for you.