"Call Failed" to call number from some mobiles

[eddy0612]

My main emergency contact has just moved from Virgin to O2. After the SIM was eventually transferred to keep their original number, we have ended up in a wierd situation. Just to be clear, all was working before this SIM transfer as far as I am aware.

A handful of others (they dont exactly have a large set of people to test with though) can call their mobile number fine.
From my home phone line (Virgin), I can dial their mobile number ok. 
I have 5 Virgin mobile SIM's on my account. 2 can call that mobile number fine. 
3 of our Virgin mobile SIMs cannot dial that number

When any of those 3 attempt to connect to the contact, it fails. We get a weird 3 beeps and then "call failed".  (All 3 are iphones, in case it makes any difference, but the 2 that work are also iphones). If I change the contact phone number to something odd, I get a 'Number was invalid' voice message, so its not directly that

Virgin support said it must be the other end, and when a call fails to connect they cant debug. O2 support are working with them but have failed to identify anything and feel close to throwing it back as a Virgin problem

From one of the failing phones, I tried
- Rebooting it
- Manually typing the number on the keypad (same issue)
- Changing the contact so it didnt have the number in, and setting up a new contact with the number in
- Redownloading the Virgin network settings and reapplying them (I was getting desperate)

If it was one phone, I could understand it to be a phone problem, but with 3 phones having the same I just cant explain what might be going on

Has anyone any suggestions on
(a) which end needs to look at this
(b) what might be the cause
(c) what to try!
(d) Any suggestions on how to get Virgin & O2 talking together

They are over 80, and remote to me, so any advice appreciated

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @eddy0612,

Welcome back to our Community Forums! Than you for your post and I'm very sorry to hear that your emergency contact is having some issues with their mobile services after switching from Virgin Mobile to O2.

However, we you're not the account holder, we can only advise basic checks, as we would need the account holder to reach out. However, we the account holder of the mobile that's experiencing issues is no longer with Virgin Mobile, we would advise them to reach out to the O2 team on 0344 809 0202 to take a look at their Contact page to see how else they can get in touch.

There's also their troubleshooting help page that you can take a look at to see if this can assist further. 

As they're no longer a Virgin Mobile customer, we would be very limited as to what we can do to help as we'd only be able to assist with their former account.

Please keep us updated on how you get on and if you need any further help.

Thank you.

[eddy0612]

Hiya, thanks for the response, and its not overly a surprise that the perception is it must be their (O2's) problem but I hesitate to agree.

The difficulty I have is how do I know its an O2 problem. I am the account holder of 3 sims which are all virgin media, which are the only 3 sims which are unable to talk to that number (that we've found - ie everyone else across the family has no problems).  I appreciate the problem started when they swapped their sims, but that doesnt rule out a Virgin Mobile issue or a contact/iphone issue.

But being told that Virgin cannot help if the call doesnt actually connect, doesnt help pin down the cause. In addition, O2 could validly say 'it all works here, the only problem is with Virgin Mobile' sims, so its 'obviously' their problem, then we are left stuck in the middle.

The point of this question was to seek out ideas of how to proceed, and if anyone has any ideas at all as to what might cause it. What can be the cause of 3 beeps followed by some shorter beeps and call failed when I try to make the call? Its not an invalid number as you get told if the number is invalid. If the number is therefore not obviously invalid, what then?

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @eddy0612,

Thank you for coming back to me about this ongoing issue. 

There are a number of problems that can arise when a mobile number is switched from one provider to a new provider. The network the number is moving to would be there network to look into for a resolution. However, we highly recommend that the account holder creates a profile on our Community Forums and create a thread for this issue so that we can look into their individual situation and carry out all the relevant checks to help and so we can give accurate advise. We look forward to hearing from the account holder in regards to this issue.
In regards to your question regarding the three beeps - depending on the type of beeps, this could be any issue from the mobile not being logged on correctly and calls being unable to be routed to the number, to congestion, or the handset the SIM is in being blacklisted. Again, to give specific advice on what this situation is, we will need to speak to the account holder to provide accurate advice.

Thank you.