Unable to take phone number when i leave post office

My mom moved to post office broadband 10mb 12 months ago from BT who she was with for over 45 years with the same telephone number and broadband. She has been with post office for 12 months and now she wants to go another provider because of price rises etc but all the providers i have tried to change to say she will need a new number and cannot take her number with her? Any ideas how she can keep the number she has had for 45+ years. I have tried BT , Plusnet, John Lewis , Now broadband.

If the number was previously a BT number then they should be able to take the number with them

When she goes through the BT website ordering process it states that a new number will be supplied same as the other isps.

Been in this situation before and some of the questions asked can lead you down this path even when that was not what you wanted.

Best to start using the postcode, then select house number and only enter the telephone number later

If your mum is really desperate to keep her number, then she should consider porting her Post Office number first to a voip provider such as yay.com (even if she has no intention of using their service) and then moving it to BT or possibly Sky.

I say this from experience as my line was with Post office last year (originally BT issued number) and then moved to yay.com and if i enter my yay.com number, only BT and Sky allow me to keep the number - yet when I was with Post office, no ISP would allow me to keep my number. On the downside yay.com will charge you £20 for the number migration (takes about 5 working days) and your broadband might be ceased altogether.

Edited by baby_frogmella (Sat 13-Oct-18 08:25:39)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If the number was previously a BT number then they should be able to take the number with them

Exactly.

If your mum was with BT for 45 years she should absolutely be able to take her phone number to any other provider. Maybe they should be reminded that the law changed on this many years ago now and they should get up to date.

On the current OfCOM website, this page posted in 2015 gives advice about switching your provider and states:

"If you want to keep your existing landline number, let the provider you wish to switch to know. However, you may not be able to keep your existing landline number if you are switching landline provider at the same time as moving home."

As ktitfit1 says, perhaps both Post Office and any new provider need to be reminded of the OfCOM advice that you can port your number if you so desire when you are staying at the same location.

This is strange, when moving line rental from Post Office in the past I have definitely between numbers to retain the numbers on 2 occasions, once when the line moved BT/PO/ZEN moving to zen around 2015 and another that went BT/PO/BT in 2016. There were no issues around this and it all went through easily. The most recent one was a return to BT (effected in 2016) - I note the OP says BT have claimed they cannot do this on the existing number which is rediculous. Maybe time to call back and go higher up the call centre chain.

I moved from Post Office to Plusnet and the number was retained. Prior to that the line was not active, although judging by the old BT hub that I found it was probably a BT line in the past.

In reply to a post by KINGMUZZAUK:

My mom moved to post office broadband 10mb 12 months ago from BT who she was with for over 45 years with the same telephone number and broadband. She has been with post office for 12 months and now she wants to go another provider because of price rises etc but all the providers i have tried to change to say she will need a new number and cannot take her number with her? Any ideas how she can keep the number she has had for 45+ years. I have tried BT , Plusnet, John Lewis , Now broadband.

Just to update everyone. Thankyou for all your help. With your help and lots of research the only way for my mom to keep her number was to migrate to talktalk themselves (who supply postoffice anyway) which was completed yesterday. On her last bill from the postoffice it states in the bill breakdown "Telephone number OVERRIDE " So im not completely sure why no other isp could retain the number.. Might be a sneaky way to keep customers?