In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

You are barking up the wrong tree! Line rental was never with PN and so was never terminated with them nor subject to their T&Cs.

Probably I am barking up the wrong tree, but:

http://www.plus.net/support/customer_service/billing... - "4. [...] Generally, the main reasons for broadband ceases are: [...]
The telephone line used to provide broadband is cut off." Perhaps the line rental doesn't have to be with PN?

In reply to a post by 4M2:

http://www.plus.net/support/customer_service/billing... - "4. [...] Generally, the main reasons for broadband ceases are: [...]
The telephone line used to provide broadband is cut off." Perhaps the line rental doesn't have to be with PN?

But in the case of the OP, the telephone line was NOT cut-off! There had simply been a number change.

In reply to a post by johnjburness:

But in the case of the OP, the telephone line was NOT cut-off! There had simply been a number change.

I'm just speculating that PN's system saw the phone number as being inactive or "cut off" when the migration process was begun because there was an error with updating the number change, for whatever reason. Perhaps when the system saw that broadband was being provided to an inactive number then there was an immediate cease of the BB service.

I don't believe the OP was negligent in any way: several years ago BT retail said everything would be fine when the number change was made, PN continued to supply BB and it was only recently, when the migration process was begun, that the error was presumably discovered.

In hindsight it's easy to say that the OP should have done this that and the other but to my mind the fact the number change didn't cause any issues and he continued to get broadband means that any further actions on his part, at that stage, wouldn't have seemed necessary.

But as the number held against the Service ID was not the number associated with the account the CS person (wrongly) took that to mean the migration had completed. So closed the account.

The rest is history.

If the OP had informed PlusNet at any stage of the number change the problem would not have occurred. Similarly, if the CS representative had four times the experience and/or four times the time to deal with issues this may not have happened, as there is at least one other simple check that would have shown the customer was still on PlusNet broadband.

As has been (sort of) pointed out, the BT person assuring the OP that there would be no problem should also have advised him to tell his ISP.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As has been (sort of) pointed out, the BT person assuring the OP that there would be no problem should also have advised him to tell his ISP.

Point taken, but putting myself in the OP's shoes I would have assumed that BT retail and PN would have sorted it out without any potential "spanners in the works" from me LOL!

Add the varying opinions here to the incompetence of some suppliers that should know better, the user often hasn't a farts chance in a hurricane of understanding the state of play.

Yes, I nothing wrong with what the OP did or didn't do. I too would have been justifiably upset if the BB was ceased 11 days early and migration hadn't taken place, then had to contact PN support and get it sorted.

You must remember, with all these OFCOM rules, that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

For non full LLU stuff.
The phone provider doesn't know the ISP, & the ISP doesn't know the phone provider, only that the phone provider using BT wholesale equipment.

As far as I know, neither, BT wholesale, or Openreach is allowed to tell either of them.

Normally, it's not a problem, but change a phone number, & there's a records mismatch.

As one side can't tell the other, you can end up with problems.

As the customer is the only who can talk to either side, it's in their interest to keep both informed.

So it's looking like the root cause of the OP's problem is that BT retail assured him that changing the phone number would not result in any issues with the broadband. As far as the OP was concerned it didn’t whilst he stayed with PN for BB only.

As we now know, and as you say, the line rental provider can not communicate with an ISP who is different to that line rental provider and problems can arise when an end user wishes to migrate to another ISP, which in the OP's case was a phone number change 3 years ago.

Under those circumstances it seems that it is the end user’s responsibility to keep the other parties informed - that's incredible!