Ummmm.

I wonder who told you that about Vodafone.

Just that at one time Vodafone broadband was a BT Wholesale White label service. As you say, (I believe) their customers were transferred to PlusNet long ago. However I would have thought the customer would have known they were with PlusNet.

Since then, Vodafone have bought C & W. If the tag on the line is Vodafone I would think that's what the ceased service was, and nothing to do with PlusNet.

Well, I think I found that Plusnet purchased Vodafone with a web search myself, but this info may have pre-dated the purchase of C&W. I suppose the point is that even after more than 30 days of a supposedly ceased service the tag remains.

I was able to get a little more out of Primus today. The quality of their customer services reps appear very variable, but I suppose you get what you pay for. They will apparently try a stop and start by Friday. We'll see...

I hope you don't mind me updating this with the latest.

Well, Primus's promise to perform the stop/start by last Friday 15th turned into Thursday 21st (yesterday). Then, when I phoned this morning to check progress, they informed me they didn't want to do it after all and I would have to pay about £55 for the pleasure. No thanks. Another two weeks wasted.

I phoned Ofcom next who informed me that it depends on whether the tag is *active* or not... you can have inactive tags. Regardless of that, they said, if I have exhausted all possibilities then it's down to the gaining provider to look into why the tag is active when the service is ceased.

I spoke to Zen and they refuse to do this.

I then spoke to Andrews & Arnold who have suggested it is possible to ask BT Wholesale about this. They referred to some "grey area" where active tags can be removed. So if they can do something about it then they get the business.

Edited by deleted (Fri 22-Nov-13 11:52:05)

Well I thought I'd bring this thread to a close... I'm posting this via an ADSL line!

My next steps were to approach Ofcom about this. Their general response was that the gaining broadband provider (Zen) should be doing more to sort the situation out, whether the tag is "active" or not. So I went back to Zen, who refused to do anything because they maintained that an active tag meant their hands were tied.

So at that point I went back to Andrews & Arnold. A&A said it could be sorted with a phone call to Openreach, so I told them the business was theirs if they could fix it. Sure enough, phone calls were made and Openreach soon confirmed the tag would be removed. There was a slight hiccup when it wasn't removed when expected, but after chasing by A&A the situation was remedied, I placed the order and it took four further days (one day faster than estimated) for the "i" LED to light up on my router.

Why Zen couldn't have done that from the start I don't know. It strikes me that ISPs don't fully understand their responsibilities, or at least their staff aren't fully trained in the possibilities.

It's hard to understand how Zen, who have a reputation second only to AAISP, failed to handle this. But it isn't the first, or even second time I've seen weird failures like this by Zen support reported on these forums. It isn't even as though I costs them. Failing to gain the customer certainly does so, both financially and reputationally. (Spellchecker doesn't like that!)