General house moving query - best approach for new order?

My mum is moving home, but has at least a few weeks between leaving one property and moving into her new one. So, she will be ceasing her current phone / broadband (Plusnet).
Once she has exchanged on the new property (i.e. it's more certain she will move in, plus likely to have a completion date) - what's the best way to pre-emptively get a new service set-up? Any tricks or things to look out for? Can she order weeks in advance with simply her new address but state a certain go-live date? Or at least get things reasonably close. It will be standard phone and FTTC type deal. I'm with Zen so might try managing it for her (or at least under my main Zen account).

Is she unhappy with Plusnet? I thought they did house moves.

She's in the fun position of having sold her property, moving out in the next few days, but not exchanged on the other, and unlikely to in the next 3-4 weeks. Potentially the new house could fall through, so can't really plan for new services until she exchanges on a new place.
Not sure whether Plusnet could have done a house move in these circumstances, but she has cancelled her services on moving out day.

They do and when my daughter moved house the transfer went very smoothly and without any cost. There was a pre-existing line at the house she moved to.

If it were me, I would ring PlusNet and ask their advice. I would have thought that they could easily hold a transfer in abeyance.

p.s. - ahh.. "cancelled her services" perhaps that means she has already been in touch with PlusNet and cancelled.

Edited by longedge (Tue 20-Apr-21 08:14:59)

In reply to a post by longedge:

They do and when my daughter moved house the transfer went very smoothly and without any cost. There was a pre-existing line at the house she moved to.

If it were me, I would ring PlusNet and ask their advice. I would have thought that they could easily hold a transfer in abeyance.

p.s. - ahh.. "cancelled her services" perhaps that means she has already been in touch with PlusNet and cancelled.

My mother in law moved a few years ago. There was gap of about a month, because BT-OR hadn't cabled up the new flat when she moved in. No problem, Plusnet held her number in 'limbo' for that month. She applied (well, I did for her) when she exchanged contracts, so a total duration from order to fulfilment of 6 weeks.

Yes, it seems the cancellation has been arranged, but she wasn't bothered about retaining the number anyway - has not had her phone plugged in for years.
I'm making the assumption that there is a working copper line going into her potential new house. It's not a new build and shows up on the availability checker by address, FTTC 70Mbit or thereabouts. So I guess we just choose a new provider once we have a definite moving in date and see how well they can coordinate getting up and running.

My parents just moved house and have remained with Zen. Their new property had a line but it had been ceased following the death of the previous owner and so needed reactivating (by BT/OR). Zen could not place an order until the line had been reactivated and then their standard process (10-15 days) was followed. Because the service could not be migrated within three days their account was also closed and a new one created once the line was active.

Zen were good as their word and everything happened more or less seamlessly with a new router and account (that I now manage for them). All it took was a couple of emails and simple phone calls. Job done.

BT/OR on the other hand we’re an absolute disaster leading to messed up orders, a line terminated when it shouldn’t have been and needing reinstating and their own database having three different records for the same address of which two were completely wrong and caused job cancellations & failures. OR wouldn’t tell BT what the problem was either, just the job ‘failed’.

BT didn’t want to know about initiating the move unless it was within two weeks. It’s all sorted now but I spent hours and hours on the phone to BT trying to sort the mess out. We got there in the end, but oh dear, what a mess.

Edited by MercuryRH2 (Tue 20-Apr-21 13:11:26)

Yeah I am bit apprehensive, hence this post. I'm also not clear whether decisions by the previous owner on their services will have any influence on getting things moving. I get the sense that my mum will have a few weeks between exchange and completion, so in a perfect world I'd like her to move in on day 1 with a functioning copper broadband connection - especially as she's 100 miles away and I'll likely be visiting to help check / set up her router etc!

So my final pondering:
Does it make a difference how the person who is leaving a house "finishes" their phone/broadband? If they fully cancel (line ceased?) then it takes longer for the new occupier to get going? Is there some better mechanism for ensuring minimal downtime, and how much coordination does this require from the person leaving. The house purchase has become mildly aggravating so not sure my mum will want to engage massively over getting the seller to do something sensible with their phone/broadband service.

In reply to a post by MercuryRH2:

My parents just moved house and have remained with Zen. Their new property had a line but it had been ceased following the death of the previous owner and so needed reactivating (by BT/OR). Zen could not place an order until the line had been reactivated and then their standard process (10-15 days) was followed.

That's interesting. I moved last year, to a house that had had the line disconnected two years before. I was able to place a house move order with Plusnet a month before the 'move in' date. In fact the only 'umm/err' from Plusnet was whether BTOR would have anybody available (even with that notice) to perform the activation because of Covid. In the end they did (or rather it was someone from Kelly Coms)