Bizarre. Can dial out on landline but phone number appears to be somebody elses.

1986joe

I have a bit of a dilemma, which I can not fathom.
We moved into our new house about six months ago and initially decided to try getting by with mobile phones.
However, we decided to make a switch to a broadband and landline deal, and phoned a few companies to get quotes. We were told we would need an active phone line, otherwise we would be charged about 100 pounds.
Since I noticed we had wiring for a phoneline, I decided to see if I could find a dialtone once I plugged in a phone.
To my shock I did, and for some reason, I was then able to phone out to other numbers. I decided to phone my wife's mobile so our new landline number would come up on her call display. It did, but when she phoned it back, somebody else picked up the phone.
We don't believe this to be the previous owner (at least not the owners immediately prior). However, the phone allows us to dial out and speak, but nobody can dial in. Goodness only knows who is getting the bills.
The problem is that I can't tell the landline/broadband provider what our phone number is, because it appears to be somebody elses. Therefore, I cannot get them to make the adjustments for our new broadband/phoneline. I fear that I may have to pay the hefty connection fee after all.
Done anybody have any theories as to what might have happened here? I am completely at a loss.

Heinz

Does dialling 17070 also produce that same number?

Mark_In_Hampshire

Most suppliers seem to charge the connection fee anyway regardless of the condition of the line and what needs doing to it, unless you were prepared to go with BT who sometimes have free connection offers tied in with long contracts and abysmal service.

Regardless of supplier, you sign up for the line and then you're given the number you will provisionally have, though it's best to always ignore that and wait until the line is working, and then check the caller ID as you did before to check what number you actually have. May be the same, may well be different. Indeed it probably will need to be different. You could not simply give the existing number to a broadband supplier at the moment anyway - it isn't [necessarily] your phone number.

I don't see that this is your problem. You have a socket and a dial tone, so go ahead and order your line anyway. The technical side of it will have to be sorted out when the line is set up (which means that there's a chance that once it has been set up you'll then have a fault report to do, unless someone at Openreach spots it)