BT "lost" landline number in Fibre order

Would be grateful if anyone knows the best route to an escalation for a family member which is turning out to be a complete nightmare.

Their phone and broadband was with TalkTalk FTTC before Christmas and they ordered a new BT Fibre package - at the time of ordering (before Christmas) BT sales assured that the phone number could be ported across to Fibre etc, and neighbours in the same road had recently had Fibre installed and manged to keep their landline number.

Order then got delayed by a few months due to Covid.

Last month the new fibre service went live however the old copper line and broadband with TalkTalk had not been ceased and instead BT had supplied a new phone number with the Fibre, so they were paying for two separate services which was not supposed to happen.

Called BT who said it was not possible for the old landline number to be transferred to the Fibre digital voice, however they could transfer this to a copper package and the old number would be retained.

This occured yesterday however a new phone number has been issued and the number that was supposed to have come across from TalkTalk is no longer operative. They were asked to confirm this multiple times and they provided assurance the old number would not get lost.

After numerous phone calls with support yesterday they are claiming it is with the BT renumbering department and should be resolved within 14 days however thus far everything they've said would happen hasn't and I'm keen to get this escalated before the number gets completely lost.

Any advice?

Just keep pushing it with BT.

I was "slammed" a couple of years ago by Talktalk. One day, out of the blue, my phone and broadband were cut over from Plusnet to Talktalk, and the landline changed to a different phone number, in somebody else's name too.

Plusnet were able to sort it out, and get my old number reinstated, but it took about three weeks. Annoyingly, I had to create a new account with Plusnet, and they weren't able to copy across my referrals, so on every renewal I have to remind them of this to get a discount.

In future I intend to move my number over to a VOIP provider so at least the phone number is safe.

Talk Talk lost a friends number, he never got it back. When I dropped my landline I cancelled the line by porting the number to sipgate and the ADSL and line went dead and Sipgate have my number which is used on a 4G router. When I get FTTP I will only get the data and leave the number with sipgate. BT do not know how to get fibre and an old landline number to work together either let alone talk talk.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/bt-broadban...

In reply to a post by kommando:

BT do not know how to get fibre and an old landline number to work together either let alone talk talk.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/bt-broadban...

Don't they?

Some discussion at contact stage to ensure it would transfer, then in advance of my FTTP install the VOIP handset was semi-active - I could dial out but incoming was still on copper. As soon as FTTP went live, call were routed to teh VOIP handset on my old BT PSTN number.

Personally, I would give up on BT and contact Andrews and Arnold to see if they can port the TT number over to their VoIP service. Cancel the BT Fibre digital voice package (if you can) and stick with the FTTP package for the duration of the contract.

I have just had a complete nightmare with a port and renumber due to Openreach being unable to follow their own process and I doubt I would have got it resolved if I hadn't been with Andrews and Arnold

Thanks for the replies everyone - I hadn't actually thought about the AAISP number port route. I'll consider that as an option in a weeks time.

I've spoken to BT again who claim it has not been released by TalkTalk yet but should be within 2 weeks, so at that point it ought to work.

In the meantime I've sent off a letter to their head office complaints department - can't do any harm.

I suspect they didn't invoke the migration process properly with TalkTalk which is why all this trouble has occurred.

In reply to a post by timandhaylea:

Personally, I would give up on BT and contact Andrews and Arnold to see if they can port the TT number over to their VoIP service. Cancel the BT Fibre digital voice package (if you can) and stick with the FTTP package for the duration of the contract.

I have just had a complete nightmare with a port and renumber due to Openreach being unable to follow their own process and I doubt I would have got it resolved if I hadn't been with Andrews and Arnold

How fast were AAISP able to port it over?

10 days (limited by Openreach), but as is usual with AAISP, I didn't have to go chasing them to make sure everything was going to happen to the timescales they advised.

Reading through their Trouble Reports log where they paste in their online chat sessions with OR make for interesting reading - especially our initial attempt to port and renumber.

Did they sort it?

Not yet - in theory it should be getting sorted on Monday. If it hasn't been fixed then I'll try porting it across to AAISP VoIP.

The BT customer facing staff are always quite helpful to be fair but they make assurances that their back office staff fail to deliver, you would think they had got a grip of it by now. Every time I have dealt with them it is never straight forward with any matter.

As predicted nothing happened today despite assurances from the escalation team that someone was going to pick this up on Friday/Saturday. Had to chase them again. The "order" has now gone in and should go live tomorrow.

We'll see...

There's no wonder people get really annoyed with them.

How’s the dead horse flogging going? 😂 (it’s frankly appalling that it’s the most routine of tasks that can can be so screwed up by two large companies, that is supposedly their “bread and butter”)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

How’s the dead horse flogging going? 😂 (it’s frankly appalling that it’s the most routine of tasks that can can be so screwed up by two large companies, that is supposedly their “bread and butter”)

Managed to get it back today, and all appears to be OK. I am going to suggest they seek some goodwill compensation because they've ended up paying talktalk for a service for an extra 2 months, on top of the landline being virtually useless for 2 weeks due to the number changed. In addition at the start the mobile phone package order was also placed wrongly and the SIM discounts were not added up. All in all, this is probably approaching £100 worth of services paid for not consumed and as for the time spent - probably in excess of 10 hours wasted making phone calls and the like.

Interestingly enough if you select the "I'm thinking of leaving option" when calling it it normaly results in being answered much quicker and by staff who have the power to do stuff.

The amount of things that went wrong with the order is not just bad luck, there's clearly a lot of issues with the way BT handle things and their back-end processes. Shame really.

Thanks to everyone here for the help!

Edited by Pipexer (Tue 25-May-21 18:30:25)

Finally eh! Definitely seek compensation there for not only straight loss of service, which without working service they’ve no cause to bill you for, but also at least a goodwill gesture for your time in getting them to resolve it.

Another quick update - BT have now charged an additional £30 activation fee (even though they said on the phone they wouldn't charge for their cockup)

In addition, the fibre package that was ordered was specifically a 12 month contract however the package is showing as a 18 month contract.

There's been no response to a letter of complaint which was sent a couple of weeks ago regarding the landline number (admittedly this has been resolved).

Really is shambolic - so will be complaining further.

(edit - contract appears to be 18 months but should have been 12)

Edited by Pipexer (Sat 05-Jun-21 11:48:41)

Not their finest hour then 🙈

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Not their finest hour then 🙈

It gets better... The package is being charged at more than what was ordered too. We went back through previous emails and the package came with a £8 monthly discount for the duration of the 12 month contract, this is nowhere to be seen.

It looks as though at some point BT have cancelled the order for the original service/package and just invented their own one - which has then resulted in most or all of these problems.

I think at this point it is grounds to pursue a more serious complaint. If it wasn't for the risk of losing the number again at this point I would be pushing for an agreement to escape the entire contract and move provider as well as some compensation.

Definitely a ‘letter’ (email) to the CEO then!