cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Lost landline number

Old_Chap
Joining in

I have exactly the same issue since the activation last Friday moving from Sky to Virgin. My family has had the number since 1963. Is there any way you can help?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

goslow
Alessandro Volta

@Old_Chap wrote:

I have exactly the same issue since the activation last Friday moving from Sky to Virgin. My family has had the number since 1963. Is there any way you can help?


At the start of the year, another customer described recovering a lost number with Sky via this process

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/HELP-LAND-LINE-NUMBER-LOST/m-p/4570242#M146879

Whether this is feasible in your case I have no idea. I think other factors can come into play such as which company actually owns the number and whether the number has been transferred to other providers before.

@jem101 has described the standard process for the number transfer and there are plenty of past topics on here where a standard transfer to VM has gone wrong for various reasons (usually because the customer has cancelled the existing service)

Unfortunately, getting VM to recover your number (assuming it is actually possible) will be entirely dependent on getting lucky enough to have your request put through to a person who actually understands the issue and how the transfer processes work and then has the authority and willingness to make it happen for you.

VM generally fall flat on their face every time a task falls outside of their default processes and they have to come up with a unique solution to a problem. I hope the VM forum team can help sort it out for you.

See where this Helpful Answer was posted

5 REPLIES 5

Akua_A
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi @Old_Chap,

Welcome to our community forums and sorry to hear you are having a similar issue with your landline since moving from Sky.

I can understand how important it is to keep the number and we want to do our best to help. 

I have been able to access the account and I can see that you recently spoke to our team regarding this. Do you need any further help regarding this issue? Is there anything else we can help with?

Thanks,

Akua_A
Forum Team

New around here? Check out the do's and don'ts, in our Community FAQs


I have had a number of calls with Virgin and all have said that there isn't anything that can be done except to make a complaint to Senior Management to investigate why this happened and eventually see if the number can be restored and this will take up to 21 days. Looking at other responses I see that others have been able to get their numbers back. My concern is that waiting for complaint process to run its course will effectively mean that my old number, which is now in the pool of available OpenReach  numbers, will be allocated to someone else. I am also concerned that this seems to be fairly common issue. If I had been told to only inform Sky that I wished to end the contract after the number had been allocated to Virgin, this would not have occurred. Instead I was told to cancel on the day of activation, having said I was moving the Virgin. There was no mention that a new number would be allocated and I would need to then try to get my old number back. Not sure why this was the process because when I moved from BT to Sky there was no issue and my number continued without interruption and without any action on my part. The activation date was known weeks beforehand, why was Sky not contacted to transfer the number as a matter of course?


@Old_Chap wrote:

Snip...

The activation date was known weeks beforehand, why was Sky not contacted to transfer the number as a matter of course?


To be fair, it's quite possible that Sky was contacted to start the number port but if you had already contacted them and arranged to cancel, then that puts an immediate halt on the porting process - this isn't Sky nor VM's doing, it's a regulation by OFCOM.

The way it is supposed to happen goes like this; you sign up with VM and request a number port, it's important that you absolutely do not arrange anything with Sky. Your VM connection goes in and becomes live, you get a temporary number for the VM phone - at this point you have two broadband connections and two phone lines, which you have to carry on paying for - and that's annoying but it's just the way it works! VM then request the port from Sky which can take a week or so to process, once that happens the Sky phone line is stopped (it has to as there's now no number associated with it) and as a by-product of that the Sky broadband is stopped, because the line is no longer working. Now it may mean you paying for both services for an extra month, but as you have found, if you do it any other way, then, you are begging for trouble.

If it all sounds convoluted it is because VM and Sky use entirely different infrastructures and it is perfectly possible, in fact many people do, to have services from both of them at the same time as a sort of redundancy. Unlike moving from BT to Sky which uses the same underlaying infrastructure, and which 'forces' everything to happen at the same time - it can't overlap.

You were, it seems, badly advised as to the process, its not impossible that you will get the number back, it depends on how hard Sky, OpenReach and VM try - but I have to be honest, I don't think it's likely.

I'm so sorry to hear that this has been the case @Old_Chap

 

If the team have said that the number is unable to be ported over then it is likely that we are unable to do so, however I would be more than happy to take a look into your account and confirm this with and if you have not already raise a complaint for you. 

 

I will send you a PM now so we can take a look. Please keep an eye out for the purple envelope in the top right corner of your screen alerting you to a new message. 

 

Thank you. 

 

goslow
Alessandro Volta

@Old_Chap wrote:

I have exactly the same issue since the activation last Friday moving from Sky to Virgin. My family has had the number since 1963. Is there any way you can help?


At the start of the year, another customer described recovering a lost number with Sky via this process

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/HELP-LAND-LINE-NUMBER-LOST/m-p/4570242#M146879

Whether this is feasible in your case I have no idea. I think other factors can come into play such as which company actually owns the number and whether the number has been transferred to other providers before.

@jem101 has described the standard process for the number transfer and there are plenty of past topics on here where a standard transfer to VM has gone wrong for various reasons (usually because the customer has cancelled the existing service)

Unfortunately, getting VM to recover your number (assuming it is actually possible) will be entirely dependent on getting lucky enough to have your request put through to a person who actually understands the issue and how the transfer processes work and then has the authority and willingness to make it happen for you.

VM generally fall flat on their face every time a task falls outside of their default processes and they have to come up with a unique solution to a problem. I hope the VM forum team can help sort it out for you.