can you help with a battery grip

hi i have just bought a bg-e3 battery grip for my 400d and i cant seem to get it to work can anyone help please

A little more information would help heaps

check you got it switched on, switch is on the side of the grip

more information put battery into tray attached it to camera turned on switch on grip when i try to turn on the camera nothing happens the camera is dead have tried it with the aa battery tray as well and it is just the same if i put the battery back into the camera every thing works fine

big-al1956 wrote in post #9930028
more information put battery into tray attached it to camera turned on switch on grip when i try to turn on the camera nothing happens the camera is dead have tried it with the aa battery tray as well and it is just the same if i put the battery back into the camera every thing works fine

Here is a stupid question and I mean no offense, did you turn the grip on?

yes the grip was turned on and its not a silly question just glad of any held that will get it to work

big-al1956 wrote in post #9930059
yes the grip was turned on and its not a silly question just glad of any held that will get it to work

Actually I just remembered that it does not matter if the grip is on/off to turn on the camera.

Ok, I just check mine out and there are not lots of ways for this to go wrong.

The batteries are fully charged?
The gripped is screwed in all the way?
Battery door is closed all the way? Double check that as it may looked closed, but if it is not closed all the way you won't have contact.

If you screw the grip in too tight it can cause connection problems, it should be just tight enough. Back off on the tension.
The contacts are spring loaded on top of the section you insert into the camera's battery compartment, check none are stuck down, give each one a bit of press/ jiggle to make sure they are fully extended.

could it be the battery as it says nb-2lh and mine are nb-l2 is there a differance

NB2LH has a bit more capacity, but the two are freely interchangeable.

Canon BG-E3 or third-party?

it is a genuine canon bg-e3

clean all contacts? Did you remove all protective plastic, etc?

There's a microswitch on the body that the battery compartment door closes - check to see if that's working properly. If it is, then check out the grip to see if it's going to be able to make contact with the switch.

Have you tried putting a different grip on it? Or putting your grip on somebody else's camera?