Can't PAC From Vodafone to Lebara

horatiog

Not sure if this is just Vodafone rep telling porkies or not...but here goes!

Am currently on a Voda contract and got a text yesterday to say my contract has completed as well as my discount period.

Looked around for a cheaper contract and found the Lebara deals on here. Bought into one and ordered my PAC from Voda. Got a text with the the PAC straight back. 

A couple of hours later a Voda rep calls me. Starts in with the "We'd hate to lose you, can I see if we can match your new deal". Told her who it was with (Lebara) what deal was and sure enough, Voda cannot get anywhere close to it.

Then she launches in with "I hope you don't want to port your number because you cannot from Voda to Lebara". I replied that I thought that was only Voda > Voda when you by a new contract from a 3rd party provider? She said said no, because Lebara are a MVNO of Voda, a direct PAC is disallowed by Voda!

I then went on to say that I would just PAC to a PAYG company and back to Lebara then - again she said this is likely to fail and I would lose all my numbers!?! At this point, I was sure she was "telling porkies" (as I have done this "Voda > PAYG / Voda" twice before when porting to a new 3rd party sourced Voda contract)  I grew a "bit angry" and told her that if Voda were being so childish as to block PACs in this fashion (presumably as a ploy to keep their consumer base), then it was going to have the exact opposite effect in this case!

Anyway - just a warning for anybody thinking of doing a Voda > Lebara port.

flaneurs_lobster

Thanks for that.

I'm likely to be "downgrading" from Voda to Lebara in a month or so. I'm sure you're right and the rep was being a tad enthusiastic with the spiel (aka "lying"), but, just in case, please let us know if your port works OK.

ballyblack

The simplest and fastest way to get one is to text ‘PAC’ (you can omit the speech marks) to 65075.

 you’ll probably get it sent to you by text message pretty much straightaway.

At most you’ll be waiting two hours.

No need to engage with Vodafone

Use your PAC with any other provider within 30 days

Thats it

savergrant

I understand vodafone are saying that if you give a VOD pac to lebara the number will not be ported.

Sounds like a challenge, I have got a vodafone sim around somewhere, let's see what happens!

SaverRate

My wife has just used a pac code to go from Vodafone to Lebara. No issues with the switch. Much happier with Lebara and not just because of the price! 

gizz_10

I moved from Voxi to Lebara last year - both on Vodafone.  Port went through fine. The only thing i noticed was a longer downtime on the porting day as Vodafone have to do both disconnection and reconnection - so its not a seamless switch like with another provider and i was without my phone for quite a few hours on the port day.
In contrast when  I later ported to Lyca and then back to Lebara to get the 1p deal - there was literally no downtime - and the port was seamless.

savergrant

I don't seem to have a vodafone sim around after all but other people's experiences seem to be that you definitely CAN port from a major network to an mvno which uses it. Wouldn't make sense not to, as mvno's would need to put disclaimers on their websites about customers from the host network.

BlueFlash42

I also wanted to move from Voda to Lebara. Tried texting for PAC but did not work as there are 2 mobiles on the account. They suggested either phoning or doing it through the Voda app.

The latter worked ok for one mobile but errored on the second. Contacted online chat but when I reached the end of queue was told I needed to be transferred to another team. When finally got to chat with someone, they tried to offer me a better deal.

When they found I was going to a third party voda supplier, they said transferring my number was not allowed. Did I still want the PAC if the number could not be ported? I was a little concerned it may be blocked as someone else had been told the same from Voda.

Decided to proceed with porting the first number which went through without a hitch. Did the same with the other number the following day without any issues.

Clearly Voda are telling porkies to frighten people into staying with them to avoid losing their number. Looking online, it appears that number porting cannot be blocked by the provider you are leaving.

savergrant

I understand that a network can refuse to issue a pac if they have concerns about the identity of the person asking, but once they issue the pac they can't control who you join.
Not too sure about your issue with texting but maybe the problem was that the two mobiles were contractually dependent on each other so you couldn't terminate one service independently of the other?