I need to move our landline number from my parents' house to my own house (both currently with Sky and both out of contract) I have contacted BT to request this and they have set up an order for Broadband and digital home phone at my address. I have stipulated throughout every call with BT the importance of keeping the number as I now work from home and all of our customers have this number - have had it for approx 50 years. It was originally a BT phone number. Both my parents and my own house only have old 'copper line', haven't gone digital yet as the worry about losing the phone number has prevented me from initiating any changes, so I have just been working with the number redirected from their house to mine until now, which I can't keep doing. (When we contacted Sky a few years ago they told us that if we moved address, we would not be able to take our number with us and they would give us a new number, despite both addresses being in the same exchange area) I have double checked on the Openreach website and both postcodes are definitely within the same exchange area.
Service activation with BT is due at my own house at the end of this month, but I have noticed that the order update now states "sorry, we can't transfer your old number" and has allocated an entirely new number.
I contacted BT in a panic, as the main intention is to transfer the phone number to my address. The girl was extremely helpful and checked that although the number is currently with Sky, it is indeed an original BT number. She said that it is likely because the number can't work in 2 different places at the same time and I will likely have to wait until the service is activated at my address and then once cancelled with Sky at my parents' address, they will have to do a re-number order once it goes into quarantine, probably the next day. But there is still no guarantee that it will work. My concern is that we will only find out whether it works or not once the Sky contract is cancelled and if it doesn't, we can't get it back.
I really want to trust the process and hope that it will work as I believe we will eventually have to go digital at some point soon anyway, so I have to start somewhere rather than delaying the inevitable, but does anyone have any experience of similar circumstances and had a good outcome? As I am losing sleep at the thought of this number disappearing. Or does anyone know of a better way I should be doing the switch that would be a little bit more seamless or guarantee the number doesn't get lost?
Thanks in advance
