SKY/Virgin lost my home telephone number

Teme9

Dear All,

I cancelled sky because I had enough of internet drops from sky and decided to switch to virgin. I gave a cancellation call to sky on the 10th. When you do this, they said they'll cancel by the 25th and if virgin want the number than they should contact us before this. I ordered virgin media on the 10th, told them I want my old number.

Fast forward to today, Virgin media did not port my number, sky have disconnected the line and now my number is back into openreach system.

Firstly, did i do the process right?
Secondly, who's to blame virgin or sky?
Thirdly AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, how can i get my number back?

It's been nothing but chaos in my house with blame game and receiving abuse because of this and a solution would be so so appreciated.

The phone number had a lot of sentimental value with old friends only having this as a form of communication. These are old friends from home country and I won't even find out if someone had a kid, passed away, became a millionaire nothing. :(:(

Regards,
Lost telephone number

Owain_Moneysaver

Virgin would be responsible for porting the number into them, but there may be technical reasons why they can't, or their procedures may have gone wrong. Either way, they probably have in their terms and conditions that they don't guarantee to port in your number or for you to keep your number.

LazyTyper

Teme9 wrote: »

Dear All,

I cancelled sky because I had enough of internet drops from sky and decided to switch to virgin. I gave a cancellation call to sky on the 10th. When you do this, they said they'll cancel by the 25th and if virgin want the number than they should contact us before this. I ordered virgin media on the 10th, told them I want my old number.

Fast forward to today, Virgin media did not port my number, sky have disconnected the line and now my number is back into openreach system.

Firstly, did i do the process right?
Secondly, who's to blame virgin or sky?
Thirdly AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, how can i get my number back?

Having an in-flight Cease order in place can sometimes cause issues when trying to port your number.

Virgin are responsible for driving the porting process as they are the gaining party. Ask Virgin Media for an explanation and ask them to resolve this.

It will still be possible to obtain your number but you may need to be persistent and firm with Virgin Media. Request an immediate escalation.

I don't know what Openreach have to do with this, unless you were with BT or Plusnet before you were with Sky.

Teme9

LazyTyper wrote: »

Having an in-flight Cease order in place can sometimes cause issues when trying to port your number.

Virgin are responsible for driving the porting process as they are the gaining party. Ask Virgin Media for an explanation and ask them to resolve this.

It will still be possible to obtain your number but you may need to be persistent and firm with Virgin Media. Request an immediate escalation.

I don't know what Openreach have to do with this, unless you were with BT or Plusnet before you were with Sky.

Thanks for the reply

I've spent the entire day on the phone to them to no avail.
Openreach now own the number as sky had disconnected the line, it returns to the openreach system.

kwikbreaks

The line/number probably needs to be active at the time VM start their service or they won't be able to port it. When I took cable (a big mistake actually) the number transfered from the BT line to the VM line at around the same time they did the install.

spyhunter

You lost your number because you cancelled your SKY phone line. You should have left it active and contacted Virgin who would have cancelled it as part of the number port process.

All switches are done by the gaining provider, You do not need to cancel with the losing provider.

If you told SKY you were porting the number to Virgin they should have advised you to leave it working and not to cancel. Equally Virgin should have known it's not possible to port a number from a line which is being cancelled and advised you to contact SKY to cancel the cease request.

If the number was disconnected within the last 14 days then SKY are able to get it back as it will be still held in their systems. Whether they do this for you and without charge is up to them.


If over 14 days then the number will return to the original providers number list that it belongs to and becomes a spare number.

If the number has returned to the original provider then the only way to get it back is to sign up with a provider that uses the Openreach network and WLR3 to provide telephone lines and request the number be allocated to that line. This is still not a guarantee that you will get the number though and the provider will probably want to tie you into a phone contract with them and charge you for doing the work.

Teme9

spyhunter wrote: »

You lost your number because you cancelled your SKY phone line. You should have left it active and contacted Virgin who would have cancelled it as part of the number port process.

All switches are done by the gaining provider, You do not need to cancel with the losing provider.

If you told SKY you were porting the number to Virgin they should have advised you to leave it working and not to cancel. Equally Virgin should have known it's not possible to port a number from a line which is being cancelled and advised you to contact SKY to cancel the cease request.

If the number was disconnected within the last 14 days then SKY are able to get it back as it will be still held in their systems. Whether they do this for you and without charge is up to them.


If over 14 days then the number will return to the original providers number list that it belongs to and becomes a spare number.

If the number has returned to the original provider then the only way to get it back is to sign up with a provider that uses the Openreach network and WLR3 to provide telephone lines and request the number be allocated to that line. This is still not a guarantee that you will get the number though and the provider will probably want to tie you into a phone contract with them and charge you for doing the work.

Thank you for the informative response.

I have contacted Sky and they just keep on saying that they can't do anything, theyve disconnected it and it is no longer theirs. How would they be able to get the number back as they don't seem to put me through to anyone who can actually do this.
They keep telling me it has been returned to BT which I understand is true as sky only rent the phoneline from BT.

What should I do next when contacting Sky?

spyhunter

Is it within 14 days since SKY disconnected you?

If it is then SKY can get the number back but this would mean they would have to place a reconnection order to connect the line and allocate the number on that order.

I think you will have to rely on goodwill and good customer service to get SKY to do this as really they haven't done anything wrong. You asked them to cancel and they did.

If over 14 days then the only way to get the number back is what i posted to you earlier.

Teme9

spyhunter wrote: »

Is it within 14 days since SKY disconnected you?

If it is then SKY can get the number back but this would mean they would have to place a reconnection order to connect the line and allocate the number on that order.

I think you will have to rely on goodwill and good customer service to get SKY to do this as really they haven't done anything wrong. You asked them to cancel and they did.

If over 14 days then the only way to get the number back is what i posted to you earlier.

Got in touch with Sky again quoting what you said. Lady on the phone said they can't do it, their system is not letting them do it and allocated a new number and says the old number has been ceased.

iniltous

If Sky are saying the number has returned to the original number range holder , in other words, previously Sky had imported the number from someone else, and it's returned to that company when you ceased, rather than migrated your service from them, then, if too much time has passed, they won't be able to get it back, and to be honest, as you are no longer a customer of Sky,they won't have much interest in doing anything for an 'ex' customer anyway
..VM won't be able to get the number, they didn't get a migration request, they just got an order to provide service, if it's now just a spare number with the original number range holder, they will offer a number from VM's number range.
As already said, if the correct procedure isn't followed, this can happen, so they will have a get out clause in their T&C's, saying numbers are not guaranteed, and although you didn't know it, you probably didn't follow the correct procedure, and it's a moot point, if Sky or VM should have told you, that you had raised the wrong type of orders.
If the number is really important, as already said, you would have to re order a line from a company that sells WLR3 (BT, and many others, but not Talk Talk or Sky) and ask if the number that is now 'spare' in the WLR system can be allocated to your order, you may need to speak to the customer service people of whatever company you chose, and then cancel your VM service, checking first if they will charge you early termination charges.
I doubt if VM or Sky will do anything more now, than they have already done, so your decision is to use yet another (WLR) company, that gives you a chance of getting the number back, or try and advise everyone you know what the new VM number is

mwarby

The chances are they're trying to do a new line and not a reconnection, it will be even more tricky as sky probably don't use the full ordering system, but have built another one over the top to make it easier

If sky do reconnect be careful they don't tie you in to a new contract, that could make the port quite expensive

If you really want to keep the number it maybe worth considering VOIP, revk director of andrews and arnold has posted on his blog a lot about number porting and seems to know it inside out.