Somebody wants to take over your phone line

[zilli60]

I also received this text (two days running) and an email, saying that 'somebody' wants to take over my line.

When I called 0800-500288 I was apparently speaking to someone in a department called 'Value Loyalty'.  I was told that the only way that the line takeover could be prevented from happening is if I take out a new 24 month contract with BT.  (My existing contract with BT does not expire for another 9 months.)

When I asked why BT cannot guarantee the security of my line under the terms of my existing contract, their representative could not answer this question.  He just kept repeating that the only way my line would be secure is under a new  2 year contract.

After I repeatedly demanded to know why BT couldn't guarantee the security of my line, the person put me through to 'Connections'.  This department confirmed that the request to take over my line had been cancelled and I had nothing to worry about.  (Perhaps as a result of my phone call to the same number the day before.)

If I was indeed speaking to BT in the first instance, it astonishes me that this underhand practice, to get customers to take out new contracts, is going on.

[Keith_Beddoe]

I have moved your post to this new thread, so you can get advice from forum members.

[iniltous]

It’s not clear what your complaint is , are you alleging that there was no attempt to take over your line , and it was simply  an attempt to get you to call , where you would be pressured into a new contract ? , the only way  to prove or disprove that would be to ignore the warning about the takeover, and the complication that would arise if ( as is almost certainly the case ) that an attempt was made to takeover your line , most likely by someone giving your address in error to their ISP .

The timescale seems odd , your post suggests you called and the takeover was cancelled, you then ( for some reason ) called again and then was pressured into an unnecessary contract extension, you complained and were put through to another department who confirmed the takeover attempt was cancelled, ( you yourself suspect as a result of the call you made the day before ) …..so why did you call again , if you had already called and the unwanted takeover was already cancelled, or you coincidentally called the number that’s used to cancel unwanted takeovers on another matter , and then received notification.

If you called again  because you received the same text twice , what did you say ( that you hadn’t already said the day before )  , wouldn’t the conversation be something like  ‘ I called yesterday to cancel an unwanted takeover , then I received a second text , can you confirm the takeover has been cancelled’ .

FWIW , if another ISP raised an order to takeover your line , and you ( getting an automatic notification ) call your current ISP to say it’s a mistake, it’s the other ISP order that is cancelled,  that has no bearing on your contractual situation, it’s like the other ISP order never happened in the first place .

[keying]

This happened to me three times over a few days. The message is from  BT I was told by a BT employee confirmed by email that the only way BT could stop this repeated request is by giving me a new 2 year contract which given the circumstancei could leave without penalty at any time and they gave me a price reduction on what I had been paying and sent me  wireless booster disc as well. So this is surely not a devious way to pursuade a customer (with a year to go of a 2 year  on contract ) to have a new contract. Seems unacceptable that a request to take over  a phone line can only be definetly stopped by giving a new contract.

[Kimberlin]

@keying 

Has what has been described in the previous posts happened to you very recently? I only ask as you’ve contributed to a thread in which the last post was over a year ago. It would be interesting to know if you’ve had this experience within the last couple of weeks?

[gg30340]

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@keyingwrote:

This happened to me three times over a few days. The message is from  BT I was told by a BT employee confirmed by email that the only way BT could stop this repeated request is by giving me a new 2 year contract which given the circumstancei could leave without penalty at any time and they gave me a price reduction on what I had been paying and sent me  wireless booster disc as well. So this is surely not a devious way to pursuade a customer (with a year to go of a 2 year  on contract ) to have a new contract. Seems unacceptable that a request to take over  a phone line can only be definetly stopped by giving a new contract.

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It is unacceptable and not BT Policy. It was probably done as compensation because of the issue reported.

Call BT and lodge a complaint and inform them that you want your previous length of contract and its terms reinstated and that you no longer want a discount and that you will return the disc as soon as all that is done.

[keying]

Thanks. I was content to accept as no other provider did I want to move to given my own experience and feedback for alternatives

[keying]

Yes recent experience. It was explained to me by phone that regulations put in place to make moves to another supplier easy mean that BT has to accept this. They will not tell the details of who made the request to take over the line,I am wondering if this is a scam attempt that BT cannot prevent and do not wish to acknowledge? I had an email from BT advising they could not stop repeat take over of line requests  which then would happen unless each time the line owner contacted BT and said no ,

Years ago when with the Coop bank a card purchase was made just under £20 using my debit card number in the USA. I was told by Coop fraud claim staff that the large banks do not investigate card frauds under £20,and do not reinburse them,at that time  happening a lot and banks did not want to acknowledge this. The Coop did reinburse me. 

[gg30340]

Ofcom changed the way people can move between providers. As a result of these changes it resulted in some of the safe guards that were there to prevent problems such as this being removed.

[iniltous]

It’s nonsense that signing up to a longer minimum term immunises you from unwanted takeover attempts, regardless of them being a mistake or malicious , it’s obvious really , say someone misidentifies your address as a property they are moving into and calls or goes online with the ISP of their choice , that ISP doesn’t care about the contractual arrangements the current occupant  they assume is to move out ( or has already moved out) they are only interested in their applicant ….so the length of the remaining term for the other companies customer is irrelevant, and if given a moment thought it could never be the case that this matters , if you were told that a 24 month contract stops other companies attempting a migration that is just wrong and clearly could never work .

If a continued attempt is made to take over someone’s service , so several notifications of someone trying to take over your service arrive, that suggests either someone deliberately trying to ‘mess’ with you , or the applicant of the other company is convinced they have used the correct address even though they are wrong , and when their ISP says their original order was cancelled they simply tell the ISP to reorder again using the same (incorrect)  address information….if it’s a genuine mistake it’s usually with non standard addresses or areas  that have the same name but many suffixes , like Grange Street , Grange Terrace , Grange Crescent, Grange Paddock etc , you only need either the customer or the ISP to select the wrong suffix to start the ball rolling .