Utility Warehouse phone line cut off

Philijon

Hello
i called Utility Warehouse last week. I requested to stop our Broadband service but wanted to keep the landline. The operator misunderstood and stopped the landline instead. What’s worse is they cannot reinstate it. They promised to call me back today but didn’t. I chased them up and they said they’d email but they didn’t. I’m appalled. I also live in deepest Wales where I don’t have a mobile signal for 2 miles so I’m completely isolated. 

Any experience of this with UW? Advice welcome:) 

iniltous

Did they say you can have a separate landline service, many providers don’t offer telephone only service ( in fact apart from BT no one else is obliged to offer that service ) , the majority sell broadband and some can add a phone service if you want it , plus since September with the WLR stop sell , it’s unlikely that an order to remove broadband and leave telephony working  ( assuming UW offered such a thing ) would even be possible .
As far as advice, apart from BT , you will probably have to take a broadband package and if telephony is also needed it almost certainly will be an IP telephone service ( where you plug the phone into the router ) with BT they may still connect you to 0.5Mb broadband, give you a router to plug a phone into , but only charge you for the telephone service, so although you have broadband for ‘free’ it’s effectively no good for anything other that Digital Voice telephony

Were you going to use broadband from another provider and they don’t offer a telephone service that why you wanted to keep telephony on your landline ?, if that’s the case you may have been better off moving your phone number to a traditional VoIP supplier and accessing it over your new broadband providers network, you can still do this but probably will have to accept a new phone number from whatever VoIP provider you chose to use .

Philijon

Thanks for taking time to reply and that information is very interesting . I was actually cancelling Utility Warehouse BB because we had two BB services running (I’m still using EE). Why did we have two?… we had standard BB with UW which was very slow. During lockdown I upgraded to fibre with EE as they were the only provider able to install in our part of Wales and rang UW to cancel their service several times. That didn’t happen for reasons I’m still looking into. So I wasnt best pleased with UW to begin with. 

I should also mention that UW have taken responsibility and apologised for the error as they did tell me I can keep my landline. Apparently they had a partnership with BT which no longer exists which is why they cannot reconnect me. 

My real frustration is that the operator was supposed to call me back with a plan at 2pm yesterday and failed to. Then was supposed to email me which didn’t happen. I now have to drive 2 miles to call and wait to speak to the operator there who probably won’t be available again. These companies really don’t seem to care at all. 

iniltous

A partnership with BT that no longer exists is not really an accurate way to describe what’s happened, there are no more ‘traditional’ landlines , the equipment in the local exchange that provides this service is being retired and by December 2025 will be turned off , from September no new orders for these type of products could be placed , UW as a provider, using these Openreach products will have been aware of it , throwing ‘BT ’ into the discussion is misleading, BT Consumer division are affected by the same product removal and have nothing to do with UW .

….FWIW , someone not changing anything ( so not upgrading , downgrading or switching provider ) can remain on what’re they are on ( for now ) , it was by asking for the broadband to be removed is what has caused you to be affected by the WLR ( wholesale line rental ) withdrawal.

TBH , Utility Warehouse still have a ‘Partnership’ with whoever they previously had one with ( it wasn’t BT as such , but a BT Wholesale division, and Openreach ) but they have to use current products, not ones removed from sale in September, they coukd restore your service using SoTAP or SoGEA ( the replacement for WLR ) but they are IP based , so use broadband technology, even if it’s only telephony being provided.

Philijon

Thank you. There’s some valuable information here for me in terms of taking this to the next stage.
They keep promising to get back to me. Let’s see what they say. 

Many thanks 

penners324

Get hold of EE. 
Get a phone capable of WiFi calling. Most mobiles can do it these days

Philijon

Thanks.. I’ve already started that process. A much better customer service.