Landline disconnected by Talk Talk

Yngvar

Hi forum, new poster here, 
I'm looking for advice as I'm at the end of my tether with Talk Talk. Whilst my mum was in hospital we missed a letter saying that a change of provider had been requested and her phone line would be disconnected. They gave us two weeks and made no other attempts to contact her. She was in hospital for a month and passed away. Her phone line was disconnected. However, her property still has a phone line - a Talk Talk account, different number, and the broadband continues to work (no change of password etc).
There is a house, with the same postcode and similar address my mum often got mail, takeaways etc for, we believe this person has requested the change of supplier and it has come through to our address somehow. I've not been able to contact them yet.
TalkTalk refuse to admit they have made a mistake, in fact they told me that my mum, whilst dying in hospital, must have phoned to request the change, which is very hurtful. 
Mum had the same landline for 40 years and we are now stuck, knowing that there are people we may have failed to notify of her passing that cannot now contact us.
Any ideas? I've clocked up over 7 hours on the phone to them, being passed from department to department and when they realise they can't help me, they mysteriously can no longer hear me and end the call. It's like a bad joke!

Ayr_Rage

TT would not, out of the blue, change the number.

Somebody must have made an erroneous request for it to happen.

southsidergs

As much as it seems like it they haven't made a mistake, whoever set up the new account has so it's not talk talk to blame here. It's an unfortunate situation but it's under ofcom regulations they have to give the letter & 2 weeks notice & given the situation it's unfortunateley went past that where the takeover goes ahead as per regulations. If you want the number back now it's not 100% guaranteed but a new account would have to be set up & a renumber request made but that may not work if the house isn't being kept etc

oldernonethewiser

In our last house we got a letter from BT, who we were with, stating they were sorry we were leaving them and giving the date of cancellation of our landline.

There had been a request from a neighbour, different house number, to change and BT had incorrectly ascribed it to our property. 

Quick phone call sorted it.

I know TT have a complaints procedure you have to go through before you can escalate it.

What outcome are you hoping for?

iniltous

Condolences on your loss , unfortunately there isn’t any simple solution, if this other property was misidentified as your mothers , then presumably at some point the person who raised the order will contact their new provider, because if they have taken over your line they cannot be also providing the correct service to the customer that actually ordered it ….when that other property is eventually given the correct service, either by TT making new orders , or reporting faults to Openreach, the chances are the ‘line’ in your property will just stop working completely, because you are not currently a customer with anyone .

If you want to somehow get the original number back working in the property, either with TT or someone else , there is a pretty good chance that it won’t be possible, when TT ceased your account/ service ( by incorrectly replacing it with someone else’s service, even if it were another TT customer ) the 40 year old phone number , which must be a BT number if it’s that old , will have been returned to BT by TT , so even if TT sort out the addresses and re provide service into your address it will be with a different phone number .

It may be possible to join BT and specifically ask for the recently returned number to be issued , but that couldn’t be guaranteed and possibly impossible and even if it could be done , would potentially take weeks to accomplish, by accepting any old BT number , then applying a ‘renumber’ to get the original number back onto the BT line .

Yngvar

Thanks all for your replies. Yes, I believe that it will be near impossible to retrieve our old number now. I am, however, confused as to how the broadband has continued uninterrupted, no change of network name, password etc. if, as TT tell me, we no longer have an account with them.  

Ayr_Rage

@Yngvar network name and password are set by the router not externally.

It sounds like someone has requested a new TT line at the address rather than a change of provider therefore your router will authenticate on that new line.

iniltous

Have you tried calling  your old phone number , preferably from a landline ( a BT phone line ideally ) but by any method ?, if so , what happens , ringtone no reply , number unobtainable tone , busy tone etc..?, have any letters arrived at the address in something other than the family name , especially from TT ?.
Have you checked with TT that the account your mother had has been properly closed , has a final bill been received ?.
From the landline service in the house have you tried to make any calls to TT ‘ customer service’ , although they are not likely to provide any personal information about whoever is ‘renting’ the number they may offer some information, or have you checked  if it has an answer service on it , if anyone has left any messages for whoever this line should belong to 

MouldyOldDough

Yngvar said:

Thanks all for your replies. Yes, I believe that it will be near impossible to retrieve our old number now. I am, however, confused as to how the broadband has continued uninterrupted, no change of network name, password etc. if, as TT tell me, we no longer have an account with them.  

https://www.purevpn.com/what-is-my-ip will tell you who the new ISP is, if its no longer TT - but how you reverse this is beyond me......

iniltous

I think given that the TT router is still working , that the likely new provider is also TT otherwise the router wouldn’t have the appropriate credentials to authenticate 

twopenny

Is your mothers bank account still being billed by TT?

Would it show the number?

Can you get into the old account online to see billing and so forth?

I know that someone can actually request to take over an account. I was with the Post Office only to get a letter saying that the buyers of my house had requested to take over my account with same number etc a fortnight before the move and transfer and never was my permission requested. I was told I didn't have an account for my number or house but it kept working. My concern was they could run up a bill at the house and how was I to make the necessary calls and net - but I seemed to be able to use the BB.

No amount of calls to the company made a difference.