SKY/Virgin lost my home telephone number

Scottish1

What has been said is correct, the line still needs to active with yourself in order for it to be ported over to Virgin Media, if the line has recently been disconnected you can submit a resolutions form to Virgin Media's Telephony Operations Centre who will try get the number live on your account within 10 days, but there's no guarantees. I would say Sky were responsible for perhaps not telling you that's how the process works! Virgin engineer, several years experience, any questions just ask!

Teme9

iniltous wrote: »

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

That's what I am planning on doing. Move to BT regardless as they'll probably have the most chance to recover my phone number.

mwarby wrote: »

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.

Yep youre right, they want to set up a new reconnection and don't really care as I am no longer a customer

To be fair, they caused me to leave anyway and clearly delayed my situation and ended up losing my number.

Scottish1 wrote: »

What has been said is correct, the line still needs to active with yourself in order for it to be ported over to Virgin Media, if the line has recently been disconnected you can submit a resolutions form to Virgin Media's Telephony Operations Centre who will try get the number live on your account within 10 days, but there's no guarantees. I would say Sky were responsible for perhaps not telling you that's how the process works! Virgin engineer, several years experience, any questions just ask!

Yes, sky did delay the porting and virgin media did not have enough time. I've been screwed over with both companies and they've both put their hands up blaming one another.

JJ_Egan

Problem is you don't own the number .

Saying that i don't see why users cannot purchase a number and keep it in this 21st century .

Teme9

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Problem is you don't own the number .

Saying that i don't see why users cannot purchase a number and keep it in this 21st century .

That's exactly what I've been told, I don't own the number and so it's just made things really hard.

Teme9

So this is what I've been told.

Sky have disconnected the line and and that It's returned back to BT wholesale.

Whereas BT are telling me that Sky haven't released the number yet.

I want to know, Sky can never own the numbers right? Because I believe they will not cooperate with me whatsoever regardless of if I join their service or not. They're not happy I chose to leave and will not cooperate. Personally, it's a company I no longer want to be attached to regardless. I could try making an ofcom complain but it's not been 8 weeks so I doubt they'll have a word.

spyhunter

Teme9 wrote: »

That's what I am planning on doing. Move to BT regardless as they'll probably have the most chance to recover my phone number.

If you are going to go with BT Retail you need to speak to and place your order with the BT customer options team on 0800 800 030.

They deal specifically with this type of issue. The normal sales team can't do it for you.

Teme9

spyhunter wrote: »

If you are going to go with BT Retail you need to speak to and place your order with the BT customer options team on 0800 800 030.

They deal specifically with this type of issue. The normal sales team can't do it for you.

I placed the order online, told them the situation etc. They've all told me that I need to contact once my line is activated and order completed and they'll process this.

Sky are being very difficult, I wholly believe that they can give me my number within 14 days as you mentioned however there is 0 compliance from them even if I attempted to join back.

bubblegun

Teme9 wrote: »

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?

1)
Yes and No.
More FYI for others reading this..Really you should place the order with the new provider first. In the case of Sky (and other LLU providers) you should then call them and cancel the TV and broadband (or just TV if on an LLU service). If the number port order is in progree then Sky will have notification of this already and they can only cancel TV anyway.

2)
In this case Virgin are to blame as they haven't submitted the number port order correctly. If they had then the cease date of the Sky cancellation would have been stopped and it would stay active until the Virgin activation date.THIS IS ONLY THE CASE FOR VIRGIN MEDIA TRANSFERS. All other providers cannot take-over a number when the cancellation is in progress.

3)
Virgin escalation to BT Wholesale can get the number back but needs to be escalated to a higher tier (normally) e.g executive support team.

Sky have been getting lots of "heat" from OFCOM about cancellations not being processed for the past year, so all cancellation requests need to be processed as asked for so thats why Sky will have applied a cancellation to your number. As I've posted above Virgin should do a takeover. This problem happens a lot with people moving to Virgin where the number port isn't submitted correctly until months later due some issue with Virgin's process.

scones

Teme9 wrote: »

So this is what I've been told.
I want to know, Sky can never own the numbers right?

Sky do now directly own blocks of phone numbers in most area codes and I assume that when they provide a brand new line nowadays they will use a number from their own stockpile. However, if your old number was originally issued by BT and then moved over to Sky, it will belong to BT.

As a new user, I can't post a link here. However, if you search online for "Magenta Dialling Code Lookup" you'll find a tool where you can enter the first 7 or 8 digits of your old phone number and find out who whether it is officially owned by BT, Sky or somebody else.

Teme9

Really appreciate everyones help and insightfullness.

Just to cover this thread for any future readers, I went with BT after finding out they owned the number. They managed to do what is called a 'renumber' and recovered my old phone back.