Erroneous Line Takeover 4 January at 4:25PM in Broadband & internet access 1 reply 117 views

crispyb88

Hello,

My provider has disconnected both my broadband and landline without my permission.

In December I received an email from my provider informing me that I had requested to move to a new provider and that my contract would end on the 29th December. I had not requested this and phoned the accounts/billing department immediately informing them of their mistake. I was told that this was caused by my new downstairs neighbours BB provider. They assured me completely that the other provider would be informed and my contract would not end! 

On the 29th December my BB and phone line was disconnected. 

It took a while to speak to someone in the Erroneous Line Takeover team over the new year weekend. They’ve basically said they can’t do anything about it now and have acted like this is a trivial matter. They will have to order a new line number and BB contract. I’ve had my landline number for over 40 years! They’ve offered me a months free BB for the inconvenience. BB won’t be connected again till mid January and I suspect they will want to charge me for the new line reconnection. I’m waiting to speak to them again this week to finalise everything. 

Any advice on how I should proceed would be most welcome.

Thanks

iniltous

The ‘sorry to see you leave’  communication is automatically generated, and ( depending on the provider ) can have a specific number to call if it’s an error and you want to stop it happening  , it’s designed really to stop customers being ‘slammed’ , where a new company, against your wishes , attempt’s to move you to their service without you agreeing, but is also useful if someone , in error gives the wrong address to the company they want to join…if you called the appropriate number , then the ‘order’ should be cancelled, however , there is nothing stopping the person or the company trying again ( either slamming again or using the wrong address again  ) , if a second ‘sorry to see you leave’ communication comes along , the punter may think they have already contacted their provider once , so they don’t need to do it again , but if they don’t , this second migration takes place.
Want someone to blame ?, it used to be ( many years ago ) that the customer changing provider had to let their old provider know they were leaving themselves , but the company’s that in the main benefit from poaching other company customers , complained that it gives the losing company an opportunity to convince the customer not to leave , so this process was introduced even though some can end up losing long held phone numbers etc. if it goes wrong….obviously if you contacted the provider using the correct number , and they didn’t act on your instructions, that shouldn’t happen, but the reason to have a specific phone number rather than the general customer service number , is so the correct individuals , who know the correct process to cancel an unwanted takeover , get the call