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Message 1 of 5

BT incompetence

Who actually “owns” our phone number??

I have had a stressful few months with the “shambles” that is BT and there supposedly “resolution team”

moved house last November…….literally over the road, so we’ll within the same exchange area. And after the BT “salesman” telling me……..YES, no problem, you can keep your phone number. (Which we’ve had for over 20 years. The nightmare began.

Salesman sold us the TV package, as it was only a couple of quid more……fine. then for whatever reason, “open reach” cancelled that order…….no reason why. We have had over 120 emails, sms, on line chats, as to our phone, with them all of a sudden telling us they are trying this, that & the other………they even managed to phone our new address, with our old number…….and tell us it’ll be up and running in 1/2 hour.

That never happened……..and now they are saying they (BT) don’t own that number.

We have been told lie after lie………and now, when they confirm that we can’t let you have your old number……we have said, right, ok…….come and take the lot away, they are spouting the “your in a 2 year contract”

 

Totally  shocking, and  incompetent service. 

if  I can go elsewhere, I’m off.

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Message 2 of 5

Re: BT incompetence

@Regan55 

Welcome to this user forum for BT Retail phone and broadband customers.

This is just a customer to customer help forum, everyone here, including myself, are just customers.

The only BT Employees are the forum moderators.

Your phone number would be owned by whichever provider originally issues it to you.

If your number was not originally issued by BT Retail, then its going to be almost impossible to recover it.

Are you now on BT Digital Voice, where your phone calls are carried over the Internet, via the BT Smart Hub 2?

 

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Message 3 of 5

Re: BT incompetence

Thank you for the welcome.

Yes, it was issued by BT over 20 years ago. Now they are saying they “might not own the number”

Yes, we where told they are only installing digital now, and that the whole country will be by 2025 🤔
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Message 4 of 5

Re: BT incompetence

I think that the problem has happened when you moved house. On your old house you would have been physically connected to a piece of BT PSTN equipment.

When you moved the routing to that equipment would have been deleted because all new connections are via BT Digital voice (DV).

From the date that you moved, there would have been a 30 day window where your number could be migrated to DV and it does sound like that did happen assuming they called your old number on your new DV connection.

Unfortunately part of your order was cancelled by Openreach for some reason, and the DV routing was ceased, however it does not make sense if BT say they do not own your number.

The best I can offer is to ask a moderator to see if there is any way they can assist with this, as they do have access to a number of specialist teams.

One of them should post on this thread either this evening, or sometime tomorrow.

 

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Message 5 of 5

Re: BT incompetence

Hi @Regan55, welcome to the forum and sorry that things haven't gone smoothly with your order.

We'll be happy to see what we can do to help so I've sent you a Private Message so you can get in touch with Mod team. 

Cheers

John