Moving and phone nos - your BT experience

Murdina

I'm moving soon. BT say they cannot confirm the new number till I move in. It must be very very unlikely I will not get the number I have asked for surely? (the present occupants are leaving the area and do not want it).

BT say I therefore have to wait till then and indeed 2 days more to be sure!!!!! before I can tell my current ISP and initiate my broadband transfer.

Anyone else had this experience and what did they do? (I'm not able to switch to a cable/sky system by the way so am stuck with using the BT line).

Thanks!

bristol_pilot

If the current occupiers are not with BT, BT will charge you £125 for switching on the existing phone line.

Murdina

and BT have confirmed no charge. It is the logistics of not having confirmed phone no therefore not able to transfer broadband which I am trying to find out about.

princessamy86

I can't even think about the nightmare BT put us through when we moved. 16 hours on the phone, most of it spent on hold, being passed from pillar to post to a different moron who couldn't help me each time, having the phone put down on me. Then they connected the line to the house at the other end of the road-number 1, not number 25. Grrrr! Oh yes and we had to pay for the privilege of all this! Also tried to transfer broadband to be told repeatedly that it couldn't be done as the line had to be active for 2 weeks?! I'm getting mad just thinking about them!

Doozergirl

We've had the same number for some time now as we always seem to move within the same dialling code area.

However, we stayed at our in-laws spare house when we first moved to the area while we were waiting for work to be done to it and then when we moved out we disconnected the line. When the in-laws finally moved in, they were given the number that we had.

Also the house that we moved into, we had the line reconnected (the house was empty for over a year) and we had the same number as the previous occupiers as we would get marketing calls for her. I used to embarass them by telling them she was dead

I'd say it's likely that you will get the same number. The service from BT however has gone terribly downhill IMHO, I've tried others and gone back to them and was initally impressed but in this house it has been terrible. I received my first correct bill this year in June. One bill I received was for £250!! We only use the thing to keep us connected for broadband as we have fantastically cheap and generous mobile deals. Perhaps mobile broadband is a good option for us when the contract expires - I have 3G for my 'proper job' and it's great as long as I've got 3G reception!

Murdina

that sounds promising in terms of keeping no - many years ago we had the experience of our vendor taking their no so some bright spark in BT gave us the no of the house they moved too (all in the same city) which caused a lot of confusion when we got calls for these people..........saying people are dead is not a bad idea! Just been doing that for real for post for a long dead relative & people do get amazingly apologetic!

Fire_Fox

I don't think BT have gone downhill, they seem to have been charging a premium for a rip-off service for many years now. Despite the fact that in theory BT supposedly no longer have a monopoly, you have to take on an 18 month BT contract to get a line connected and only after that can you switch provider. This means that a lot of people in rented or short-to-medium term accommodation are stuck with paying for BT broadband or doing without a landline altogether.

Good luck OP!

LandyAndy

When we move to Fordingbridge the rental house we moved into had a phone number already set up with BT. Indeed it had clearly had the same number for some time as we got plenty of calls for previous tenants.

When we bought a house 200 yards down the road (in 2006) we took the rental house's number with us. There were no problems and it happened on the day I asked for it.