Virgin Mobile lost my number. Now what?

LammyQ

Hi folks, I need some advice please. I want some kind of compensation from Virgin Mobile for making an irreversible, stupid mistake but don't know what and how.

On Saturday I asked VM to change the phone number on a new pay monthly SIM I got last week. They messed up and changed the number for the SIM I already have. Today I was told they cannot retrieve my number. It was originally an Orange number so I called EE to find out when they'd be able to release it but they don't know.

I've accepted that the number is gone and I'm gonna have to go through the hassle of giving the new one to friends, family, clients, etc, but it also means I have to get business cards reprinted and stuff like that. It's just a paaaain and frustrating bc I've had the number for around 15 years.

Any suggestions?

pmduk

The normal compensation for that is around £25-50. If you can put forward a good case, the complaints handler may give you more, but not much. The number belongs to Ofcom, not you. If it's business account you can expect more, but I suspect it's not.

mark55man

sounds like a nightmare, although my OH changed her number intentionally as we got a better deal that way, and although she has loads of contacts in frequent contact, she was able through messenger and FB to very quickly get ger friends to change.


We were able (as it was elective) to get a PAC for the number and port it to a cheap £5 "burner" phone and so far this has received 10 messages in 2 weeks 9 from Vodafone and one from her best but most absent minded friend


If and when VM/Orange/EE release the number to you you could do similar, although I'm pretty sure you wouldn't get any historical messages due to the chain of ownership being broken

zagubov

Par for the course. We switched from Virgin to BT and Virgin swore blind we cancelled the number port but without ever providing details of how we carried out such an insane action. Got to say that BT were useless as well as they played "blame the other firm" as thoroughly as Virgin did.

Don't chase them for their pathetic compensation, just switch to providers with better feedback.

Martin50

Serious question: why can't the original number be recovered? Numbers are not supposed to be reused for 6 months, so it should still be available. I appreciate that this is principally to reduce the chance of somebody getting a new phone and receiving loads of calls originally intended for whoever had the number before, but would have hoped that it also allows numbers to be restored if they are lost through genuine errors on the part of the networks, as seems to have happened here. The fact that the number reverts to being allocated to the network which first issued it seems irrelevant. If a number that's allocated to EE, and is being used by an EE customer who wants to port, can be transferred across to VM surely the same applies to a number which EE is just sitting on pending reuse.

System

EE/Virgin likely have non-customer facing team that can take the number out of quarantine and allocate it to your sim.

I suggest you push for this and not compensation.