Shell Energy

dse555

My elderly mother was with Post office for her landline telephone provider, this was changed to Shell Energy when they took over post office customers. 

She now wants to change back to BT but has been told that she will lose her number which she has had for over 60 years, can this be right or what can she do to retain her old phone number?
TIA

macman

Unfortunately it's not 'her' number. 
Why does she want to switch back to BT? Is this a landline and calls package only?

Madmel

Shell will say anything in my bitter experience. We moved to another provider and were able to keep our number, but it was a faff. We terminated our contract with Shell then a couple of days later ended up having to sign up to BT to get our number back. Once that was running, we started the porting process to a VOIP provider and gave notice to BT.  We were without a landline for a few days.

iniltous

If the number has been in existence for 60 years , then it pre-dates every provider apart from BT , so ( eventually ) the number end up back with BT anyway.
If the number is currently exported to another company, and that company stops using it , because the customer they had using that number , is no longer a customer if that company  ) the number goes back to the number range holder , so eventually BT get it back.
There are plenty of examples where consumers , to get the number back , rejoin BT and BT reallocate the number , once it’s returned to them, even if BT were not necessarily the provider of choice , getting the number back was ‘worth it’ , If BT are not just the company holding the number range , but also the provider of choice, then Shell are simply trying to ‘bully’ the customer into staying with threats that the number will be ‘lost’ forever.

If you are leaving Shell , why speak to them at all  ?, the process is designed to avoid having to tell the company you are leaving anything directly, you approach the new company, indicate that you want to keep the existing phone number and leave it to the new company, to arrange it, the ‘old’ company are not allowed to call you to try and dissuade you , or tell lies or give misinformation , they can simply ask , (by letter ) if moving to a new company is what you want, if you call them as well , it gives them the opportunity to use any old BS to get you to stay….what they are saying if wrong anyway, but using the wrong process can delay the number being immediately available 

pallyman

I moved from Shell to BT & kept my old number,But i was not fussed anyway.