Unable to change providers - Any advice please?

Hi all,

I recently attempted to switch my Father over from Now Broadband to Plusnet. The port couldn't be completed because of a mismatch with the Postcode/telephone number my Dad is using. He has lived at his property for 12 years, always had the same number and has switched broadband 3 times in that time without incident.

Plusnet asked us to request that Now Broadband conduct an ORDI request to rectify the Openreach database so that the order could be processed. I have spoken to Now a few times and it's hit and miss as to whether you get a competent agent. It ranges from "What's an ORDI request" to the Openreach database seems fine.

We were emailed an alleged copy and paste of the information on the OR database (Penfold) and it seems to match Dad's details perfectly.

We seem to have reached an impasse and Dad is stuck with Now Broadband. What are our next steps to resolve this problem? Any suggestions much appreciated.

If the NOWTV service is LLU which it will be then Openreach has no visibility of the phone number, they will know there is a active phone circuit with an identifier (that is not the phone number) but for full LLU NowTV/Sky etc are in control.

Normally this is not a problem you order your new service and start tell it to take over the phone line and a porting request goes into to port the number across.

Was this an order over the phone or online? Trying another provider will probably get around the issue.

I always place the orders for him myself, always online. I have started off a formal complaint with NowTV in any event.

Interestingly, putting his number and postcode into other LLU providers checkers throws up an error.

The other piece of weirdness goes way back to when he joined NowTV from Vodafone. The new NowTV router would not work at all, so he carried on using the Vodafone one all this time. Connected?

The other piece of weirdness goes way back to when he joined NowTV from Vodafone. The new NowTV router would not work at all, so he carried on using the Vodafone one all this time. Connected?

That sounds VERY odd.... is this FTTC or ADSL ?

I suspect he may have two providers on his, one for voice, and one for DSL ...

I wonder if Vodafone never fully released the line, hence why the current systems cannot recognise the data that is being input.

Is it possible he is being billed for both and hadn’t noticed ?

Not being billed for both. He has always been an ADSL customer, but don't forget Vodafone used to have a 17mb legacy 'ADSL' product which was supplied over FTTC.

So perhaps his port to NowTV two years ago was botched?

Hmmmm. If both were ADSL, then a physical change of exchange equipment would have been required .... which kinda negates that not being done, as he’d have lost the voice side of the connection.

I can imagine a scenario where the Vodafone VDSL (if that’s what it was) didn’t get ceased at the cab, which would have stopped the exchange based NOW connection working ... but then, surely, the VDSL port would have been remotely ceased later ???

I don’t recall whose ADSL Vodafone resell ??

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And this might just be a red herring ... and have no bearing at all on the original issue.

When ordering the questions can be a bit confusing and entering a LLU number can confuse things

So when doing the initial check do this on just the postcode and when select the option to take over an existing phone line later and supply the phone number at that time.

Plusnet call this "Take over the phone line and switch the service to Plusnet (no costs apply)"