Broadband cut off following false landline takeover request

[Coreysnipe]

Posting on behalf of my partner who is the account holder in the house.

So yesterday morning at around 5am, our broadband suddenly disconnected and I thought, fair enough it's late, maybe it's maintenance.

By midday, there was still nothing so my partner called BT and we were told that in September we had been charged £30 for taking over a landline and the broadband package has been cancelled as a result. We hadn't taken over a landline and they said we would have the service back within the hour and that they would reinstate our broadband deal going forwards and discount the next bill for the false charge.

But I think it's very weird that rather than the landline takeover being confirmed with us 2 months ago, we've managed to get internet access for an extra month and then it cuts off on a random Thursday morning.

We have nothing by 6pm so we call again, I'm told that the service we had can't just be restored contrary to what we were told a few hours earlier and that we now have to wait over a week for activation but they'll send out a 4G hub in the meantime. (I appreciate the sentiment but how can it be turned off at a moment's notice and not be turned back on when you're told a mistake has been made?)

If anybody could either point me in the right direction to get this fixed, or even just explain why it's such a convoluted process to just restore our service I'd appreciate it. I'm missing an important work call tomorrow afternoon as a result of this happening and frankly if we can get another provider in quicker, we'll be moving to another provider.

[iniltous]

Often , in situations like yours , assuming you haven’t been in contact with other ISP’s about possibly moving your service to them , someone uses your address for an order with another ISP , either in error or maliciously, this can normally be stopped ( if it’s an error ) because the existing service provider sends a message ( so in this case that’s you , or more specifically your partner )  , saying ‘sorry you are leaving us , if this is not what you want , contact us immediately’ , following that advice normally stops the unwanted changeover , by cancelling the other persons order for your address.

Did you receive any notification like this  ? if you did , were the appropriate instructions followed ?, if you didn’t receive a notification ( which could be an email ) or you did receive a notification but didn’t respond to it , then  changeover takes place 10 days later , another ‘clue’ this is happening could be if a package ( a router from the company this other person gave your address to ) turns up at your address in but obviously with a different name on the package.

Assuming it’s not malicious, ( not someone deliberately messing with you )  , if your address is out of the ordinary ( flats within houses are an example ) where someone  misidentifies your flat as their own ,  it takes a while to unpick things like this , it’s not simply a case of switching something back that just happened , the ‘sorry to see you go ‘ notification has a 10 day wait before the changeover , giving you time to respond , this process wasn’t started the day you lost service but much earlier .

This may not be what’s happened in your case , but your experience seems to fit this scenario.