Transferring landline number from Plusnet to Virgin (??!!)

itm2

I decided to move my landline from Plusnet to Virgin. My new Virgin landline was installed on Dec 19th, and I phoned Virgin on Dec 20th to request the transfer of my existing number from Plusnet on or before my Plusnet contract end date - January 5th. Virgin told me that they would be contacting Plusnet to arrange this in the next couple of days, and asked me to call Plusnet on Dec 27th (today) to confirm that they had received the message.

So I called Plusnet and they told me that they hadn't heard from Virgin, and advised me to call them. They also said that it could take 10 working days to transfer the number, and that once the number had been disconnected there would be no way of transferring it. Since Plusnet have confirmed that my contract will end, and my landline disconnected, on January 10th, this is a little worrying.

I phoned Virgin and they said that they had not yet contacted Plusnet, but would be placing an order for the transfer on Dec 30th , and that the number transfer is expected to happen on Jan 5th.
The person I spoke to at Virgin was not aware of the need to give 10 days notice to Plusnet, told me that everything would be fine, and that he thought the number would be transferred on Jan 5th as requested. He didn't fill me with confidence that he knew how the number porting process worked though - giving me 2 different explanations of what was supposed to be happening on December 30th, for example.

So Plusnet are telling me they need at least 10 working days notice, and Virgin are telling me that they expect it to happen in 4 working days (i.e. the number of working days between Dec 30th and Jan 5th).

If Virgin contact Plusnet on Dec 30th as they say they will, they will have 7 working days to do the transfer as Plusnet are not disconnecting the line until Jan 10th, but I'd rather not leave it to chance. When I expressed my concern strongly the Virgin person agreed to refer it to their back office team, so I'll need to contact them again tomorrow to see if there is any more news.

Has anyone had any experience of how this process works and how long it takes? Any advice for what I can do to prevent losing my number due to Virgin leaving things too late?

iniltous

If you wanted to move the number from Plusnet to VM you really should have arranged for it to be ported at the start of the VM service (this would also effectively ceasd the Plusnet service too)

If your intention was to get a VM line in and working with any old VM number , then at some point cease the Plusnet line and transfer the number to VM ( renumbering the VM line to the Plusnet number) it probably wasn't a wise move, as that's not how the number port process is designed to work....it may be possible to get the Plusnet number onto VM's network ( if VM go above and beyond normal customer service) , but VM may end up saying to you , that if the Plusnet number was that important , you should have specified that when you initially ordered the VM service , and now it's too late to get the number back.

itm2

iniltous wrote: »

If you wanted to move the number from Plusnet to VM you really should have arranged for it to be ported at the start of the VM service (this would also effectively ceasd the Plusnet service too)

If your intention was to get a VM line in and working with any old VM number , then at some point cease the Plusnet line and transfer the number to VM ( renumbering the VM line to the Plusnet number) it probably wasn't a wise move, as that's not how the number port process is designed to work....it may be possible to get the Plusnet number onto VM's network ( if VM go above and beyond normal customer service) , but VM may end up saying to you , that if the Plusnet number was that important , you should have specified that when you initially ordered the VM service , and now it's too late to get the number back.

Ah...if only I'd had that knowledge before I started all of this. Now the question is: is there anything I (or Virgin) can do to increase my chances of retaining my phone number?

phillw

itm2 wrote: »

Has anyone had any experience of how this process works and how long it takes? Any advice for what I can do to prevent losing my number due to Virgin leaving things too late?

I didn't give notice to my old isp until after virgin had gone live, to avoid losing the number.

Which is lucky as Virgin forgot to port the number. They told me the engineer would trigger something when the line had gone live, the engineer told me that Virgin always say that and they don't.

This was a few years ago, so the process has probably become more convoluted since.

zagubov

When we tried to port our number from Virgin to BT, Virgin claimed we cancelled the port(we hadn't nor would we have known how to). BT claimed Virgin had to send them the number and Virgin claimed BT had to ask for it again.

After seven months of not receiving our number transfer, BT gave us a new number (which we had been trying to avoid). I've never knew a simple transfer would be so infuriating. Who's to blame? The other lot!

itm2

I must say I was surprised at how little both Virgin and Plusnet knew about how and when the number transfer would take place. They were both clueless.