Have Sky failed to correctly port landline to a new service provider?

[CharlieBlastoff]

I recommended to my elderly neighbour (a widow of 84) to change her broadband/Talk package to POP Telecom.  We were fed up with having to renegotiate the contract every 18 months and an identical service was available at half the price from POP.

We were advised everything would happen automatically and indeed the broadband transferred on the 19th of November 2023.  However, it soon became evident that something had gone wrong with the Talk service   Outgoing calls were OK and the line identified as the original number.  However it was not possible to receive or make incoming calls into her number.  Dialling in resulted in an effectively 'dead' connection, just quiet background noise and no ringing tone.

There have been numerous calls to POP Telecom to try and resolve this, they have referred it to Openreach who have tested the house wiring, exchange line and equipment.  The consensus of opinion is that the number has not been correctly ported from SKY to the new service provider.

It is now 3 weeks since this vulnerable lady has lost her incoming talk calls.  She relies on her landline phone and is of the opinion that Sky are punishing her for changing provider.

As an ex-telecom engineer and manager (32 years), I am familiar with aspects of the telephony service, but not with the actual number porting procedure.  I can only speculate that this is a software problem, possibly with human error involved. 

What is not acceptable is the amount of time it is taking to resolve this problem.

[Mark39]

We have occasionally seen reports here of similar problems when customers have switched TO Sky from other providers. Whether or not the underlying cause in those cases is the same I don't know, but,the advice here is always to follow it up with Sky, as the provider now responsible for the customer's service. Similarly I think your neighbour will need to pursue this though POP telecom. They'll have to liaise with Sky, as necessary.

[CharlieBlastoff]

Thanks for your reply.

Proper telephony service was finally restored on 6/11/2023, some 17 days after it was transferred from Sky.  Nobody has definitively admitted who was actually to blame for this (I don't suppose they will!) and I doubt anyone is likely to make amends by way of at least a partial refund.

After seeing this thread, I hope anybodywho has similar problems like this in future will be able to resolve it a bit more speedily.

[Mark39]

@CharlieBlastoff glad it's finally resolved. I wouldn't want to point fingers either, but my understanding is that it's the new provider who does,the switching and the old provider just permits it.