Vodafone sells your personal mobile number

nolan8213

My brother recently moved from a 2 yr contract to a pay as you go contract. In doing so they have given him the wrong sim card size for his iphone. Since he last called Vodafone they had sold off his personal mobile number.

I once heard that mobile operators are meant to wait 6 months before selling off someones mobile number. According to Vodafone he is no longer allowed to get his old number back even though he never authorised them to sell it off.

Anybody had similar issues. And does anybody know how to resolve the problem. He would of course prefer to keep his old number than to receive cheap compensation.

Jon_01

As far as I'm aware the only time the number doesn't go into quarantine for 6 months is when the number doesn't belong to the network.
So if the number was ported to Voda from say O2, when the contract was ended (for whatever reason) the number would be returned to O2 automatically.

gjchester

nolan8213 wrote: »

I once heard that mobile operators are meant to wait 6 months before selling off someones mobile number. According to Vodafone he is no longer allowed to get his old number back even though he never authorised them to sell it off.

The number never belonged to him, If we owned our own numbers we would have run out of numbers a long time ago.


As far as I know the quarantine was a guideline not a requirement, as otherwise again we could run out of numbers at some point.


That said even if the sim card size is wrong the number is not tied to the sim, so not sure why there is a problem here, as long as the number ported its a simple case of swapping the registered sim on the account (or cutting the sim down)

anotheruser

Would you bet £1000 on such a sweeping statement?
Just because it appeared to happen to someone you know, doesn't mean it's true...

Not that I am a fan of Vodafone (expensive and not great past experience), nor would it surprise me but it really narks me when people make such sweeping statements about companies with little fact to back it up.

Anon

nolan8213 wrote: »

My brother recently moved from a 2 yr contract to a pay as you go contract. In doing so they have given him the wrong sim card size for his iphone. Since he last called Vodafone they had sold off his personal mobile number.

I once heard that mobile operators are meant to wait 6 months before selling off someones mobile number. According to Vodafone he is no longer allowed to get his old number back even though he never authorised them to sell it off.

Anybody had similar issues. And does anybody know how to resolve the problem. He would of course prefer to keep his old number than to receive cheap compensation.

Sorry, I don't understand. If he moved from 2 year contract to PAYG and they sent out the wrong sized SIM, it would still include the number with the sent out wrong sized SIM? The number would/should not be released at that stage as the wrong sized SIM would work with that number?

Vodafone

Hi nolan8213

So we can take a look if the number is still active and assign it to the correct sized SIM, email me with your details via the link in our profile here.

All you need to do is copy and paste the link into your web browser and it'll take you to the Contact us form on our website. To make sure it reaches me, quote the code WRT135 - MSE in the subject line.

Once sent, you'll receive an automated reply with a reference number. Post back with this and I’ll check I've received it.

DaveCD