Shell broadband keeps cancelling my switch from Sky

blueolive

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. I went for the Shell Energy superfast broadband deal. Had all the relevant emails etc through and then a week later an email from Shell saying "We’ve received a notification from your current provider to say that you’ve cancelled your switch to Shell Energy Broadband. As you’ve decided to stay with your current provider, your order for Superfast Fibre Plus 12 will be cancelled." I've now gone around this particular vicious circle twice! Sky assures me there's nothing at their end stopping the switch. Shell had me go through the whole order process again the first time and this time they have raised a ticket to find out what's going wrong. I have to say at this point I feel like ACTUALLY cancelling the switch as this doesn't bode well. My contract with Sky ends on 12/5 so I don't have time to waste, let alone all the phone calls to date!

Am I the only one in this situation?

Neil_Jones

It makes no difference that your contract ends 12/5 because all that means is your current offer/agreement/whatever ends, not that the broadband itself will stop working.  You'll just fall into new out of contract pricing, aka expensive.

But anyway looking at the forum this may be doing you a favour.  I'd suggest if it fails again just pick somebody else.

blueolive

@Neil_Jones indeed - they are hiking their prices so was trying to switch before 12/5 as I have no reasonable option with them.

Grumpy_chap

Do you have any debt outstanding to Sky?

iniltous

Outstanding debt isn’t a good enough reason to cancel a migration, it’s only supposed to be if you contact them to say you never asked to move so we’re being slammed against your will or if you change your mind, the losing provider isn’t even supposed to contact you with an offer to stay …if you wanted to switch , and the new provider contacts you to say sorry you have changed your mind , it suggests your current provider isn’t following the rules and is arbitrarily simply cancelling your move but using the process as if you had called and said you had changed your mind, or there is some sort of mix up.
Is there anything unusual about your address ?, sometimes with houses converted into flats ( as opposed to purpose built apartments ) the addresses can be non standard , ‘top flat ‘ , 1st floor flat’ , basement flat, that type of thing , the  wrong address is selected by the new provider when you contact them ,  and a neighbour flat gets the notification of the migration, obviously they think it’s for them and a mistake, and call and get it stopped.
Do  you know your neighbours ?, you try could asking if any have had any unwanted notifications saying they wanted to move providers and they had to get it cancelled twice.

blueolive

Grumpy_chap said:

Do you have any debt outstanding to Sky?

Nope, on direct debit

blueolive

iniltous said:

Outstanding debt isn’t a good enough reason to cancel a migration, it’s only supposed to be if you contact them to say you never asked to move so we’re being slammed against your will or if you change your mind, the losing provider isn’t even supposed to contact you with an offer to stay …if you wanted to switch , and the new provider contacts you to say sorry you have changed your mind , it suggests your current provider isn’t following the rules and is arbitrarily simply cancelling your move but using the process as if you had called and said you had changed your mind, or there is some sort of mix up.
Is there anything unusual about your address ?, sometimes with houses converted into flats ( as opposed to purpose built apartments ) the addresses can be non standard , ‘top flat ‘ , 1st floor flat’ , basement flat, that type of thing , the  wrong address is selected by the new provider when you contact them ,  and a neighbour flat gets the notification of the migration, obviously they think it’s for them and a mistake, and call and get it stopped.
Do  you know your neighbours ?, you try could asking if any have had any unwanted notifications saying they wanted to move providers and they had to get it cancelled twice.

No, nothing unusual and have never had this problem before. I do know my neighbours and if there was some kind of scam going on I would know. Seems to me this is just incompetence from Shell unfortunately. I had a very thorough discussion with Sky and they checked with a tech manager while I was on the phone to be sure there was nothing preventing the switch.

Talk Talk has a good deal ending tonight but it's been one of those days so I'll wait a couple of days and see if Shell gets its act together.

iniltous

I wasn’t suggesting a scam , just an error that can happen with some type of non standard addresses…obviously you were notified by Shell when Shell  themselves received notification that the order they raised on your behalf , to takeover from Sky , had been cancelled ( they assumed you must have asked for this cancellation yourself ) but prior to that , did you receive the ‘ sorry to see you leave’ communication from Sky ?,
If you did , that would confirm that Shell had correctly identified your ‘line’ for takeover , and if the order was cancelled without you instigating it, that would suggest Sky shenanigans, ( even if they deny doing it ) , if you never received the ‘sorry to see you go’ comms from Sky , then it’s likely that Shell have misidentified your address otherwise you would have got that communication

wongataa

If Shell are having difficulty in signing you up I would go with a different provider.

blueolive

So, I finally closed the loop on this one today. I established there was a problem with the way Sky has my landline listed on the Openreach database and listed as live with BT (previous provider 11 years ago!) but not with Sky. Hence Shell were getting the message that porting might fail depending on the porting agreement. This is known as an ORDI - Openreach Data Integrity issue.

So in short it wouldn't matter who I tried to switch to. Having looked online I've seen others with a similar problem but not with Sky so I don't think it's exclusive to them. However they clearly b*ggered something up somewhere.

Whilst I was unable to get a definitive answer about this from Sky, they did the sensible thing and reduced my monthly fee to £24.50 for 18 months, which is only 50p more than with Shell. That's fine with me as I just don't have the mental bandwidth right now to deal with the Openreach issue. However, I am now forewarned and will be addressing it well before I try to switch next time.

Hope this might help someone else at some point. Cheers.

Neil_Jones

You don't deal with Openreach.  They only talk to internet providers.

So you'd do better to log the issue with Sky to get them to sort the ORDI thing out so you have the option to move providers in the future.  No point waiting 18 months, get it logged now and leave it with them.