Vodafone deception during migration

I shouldn't be suprised as my dealings with Voda in the past have shown them to be at best incompetent and at worst dishonest when it comes to customer service.

Recently, we decided to move my elderly mother from TalkTalk to Vodafone FTTC to get a better deal for her. She's had the same phone number for 60 years, but its so old that the number actually belongs to a different exchange to where she actually lives. When she moved 4 years ago (ony a few hundred metres down the road) she was able to take the number with her.

During the attempt to migrate to Vodafone, the online sign-up refused to handle it, so I thought the not-the-right-exchange issue might be it, so called Voda up.

A very nice man assured me repeatedly that they would be able to handle this manually, even going so far as to put me on hold while he "checked with his supervisor". I re-iterated that we only wanted to move if she could keep her number.

No emails have come from Voda in the meantime, but the router arrives. My sister goes to visit to plug in the equipment. When the line starts working, we call out of the landline - sure enough, the number has changed.

When Voda's call centre re-opens, my sister calls up. They claim that no such request was received to keep the number, although they agree that this was unlikely considering how long my Mum has had her number. They will attempt to migrate the number, but this "could take ten days". My fear is that the number will be re-assigned in the meantime.

I suspect that the nice chap on the line wanted to get the sign-up at any cost, knowing that the point at which the deception was uncovered, it would be too late and someone else's problem. Bastardo.

i had a smiler issue, my line was moved to Vodafone but the number did not move, they put the porting request in and a week later i got the number back.

numbers are not normally put back in the pot for 6/12 months so unless you had a easy to remember number 515151 of 300300 then they should be able to request it back.

i only lasted 6 months before leaving

Hi

You might be as well to port the number to a VoIP service, then it doesn't matter who your ISP is, you will always have the same number. This will be happening for everyone in the next few years anyway as BT want to stop providing the analogue telephone service. If you can then doing it now saves the panic of doing it later where it could all be a bit more chaotic.

Typically there is one off charge to port the number to a VoIP provider, and they will have several packages available, either pay as you go or you pay a monthly charge for minutes.

It would need a new phone as well however, or a device to connect to the existing analogue phone.

Regards

Phil

Hopefully the number can be moved.

Talk Talk have a habit of allowing numbers to float around exchanges in the same area where the code is the same but if you then try and return that to a provider that uses Openreach's line rental product (which I believe Vodafone use), you'll find it may not be possible.

If they say they can't your only option may be to return to Talk Talk to see if they still have it, although they may have returned it to the original provider which if issued 60 years ago, would be BT.

Numbers are generally not re-assigned to someone else that quickly though. You'd see the number in quarantine for while and then released to the pool.

Matt

Edited by uno (Wed 10-Jul-19 15:44:27)

In reply to a post by PhilipD:

You might be as well to port the number to a VoIP service, then it doesn't matter who your ISP is, you will always have the same number.

Might be a problem if the line number has already ceased though...

Matt