TalkTalk incompetance

Though I would add my story of TalkTalk incompetance.

I have 2 TalkTalk lines into my house. My line which has broadband on it and a phone line into the Granny annexe. After my mothers death I rang up TalkTalk and asked them to disconnect the line in the granny annexe. This was noted on the account.

Guess which line they disconnected !!!!!! My line of course, so I have no landline or broadband.

The worst thing is that the say that I will probably not be able to get my phone number back.
I have spoken to BT and SKY and they say that I have to get TalkTalk to reconnect me to have a chance of getting the number back.
Has anyone else had a problem like this ? How do I get my number back?

Cheers

Neil

ps I know, a tenous link to broadband, but wanted to vent somewhere.

Not just a Talk Talk thing to be honest, My brother had two lines into his house a few years back, one for home use and one for business. He asked Bt to close the business line as he had no use for it. they closed his home line.

Took them ages to get it sorted, lucky for him they still was able to get his old number back.


I also know of someone who had the same problem with the post office, like you they had a phone line in a granny annex and wanted to get rid of it, and the post office cut off the one in the main house. they did not get their number back.

so not just a Talk Talk problem,.

In both these horrendous cases it IS the phone companies fault.
Even if, for technical reasons, you cannot get the number back, I would phone
Consumer Direct or contact Ofcom to discuss if you can get compensation or your line back.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrig...

Edited by deleted (Mon 26-Sep-11 15:35:56)

If you think about it, it's BT fault.
They do the actual work and manage not to understand instructions given.
I had exactly the same when I wanted my business line just changed to standard residential.

Naturally, they just disconnected it, even though when I asked for the work to be done I did express concerns about what might happen and was assured that notes were made for everyone to understand. All the usual, number gone, broadband gone, wires pulled out can't be replaced for at least 3 weeks and a new contract will be needed etc. etc. after 30 years I should have know better!!

How can they sometimes be so brillient and others, boarder on the totally incompetent. I thought all this switching to computerised and automated systems were supposed to stop this happening. Perhaps they should have saved money by not doing it stop this happening.

The reason TalkTalk are saying you won't get your number back is because their CRM cannot specify a number to connect so just gives you a random number.

Depending on when they ceased your line and who the range holder of the number is, you should be able to get the number back somehow.
If it's a BT number range then talktalk keep hold of it for 10 days after which they then return it to BT.
If this has happened then the only way to get your number back is for talktalk to place a WLR provide order specifying the number you want and then migrate it back over to LLU
The problem with this is you're going to be without broadband until they migrate it back to LLU (unless you can convince them to provide an IPStream service in the interim) and if BT have already given the number to someone else then there's not much you can do other than convincing talktalk to ask BT to re-number the end user who currently has it.
If the number belongs to TalkTalk then again it will be quarantined for 10 days before being placed back into the pot to be used again.
The problem here is that your number could have been given to another customer so you would have to convince TalkTalk to contact said customer and convince them to re-number their line so you could then take the number. If the number isn't in use then talktalk would have to place the order manually, bypassing their CRM and request the number you want

Another problem is getting someone at talktalk to place your order back end manually as they won't be able to do it via their CRM and your standard TalkTalk customer service advisor will more than likely have no idea how to do this.

All a bit messy. You can tell who the range holder is by checking the number on the uk phone info website
http://www.ukphoneinfo.com/
Click on area code search and pop your number in, if it comes back with it being allocated to opal telecom then it's a TalkTalk number range