We switched to sky with broadband and landline a few days ago, ticked the correct box that we want to keep our existing landline (which we had for 35 years, and no, we haven't moved house, or phone xchange).
Switch happened this morning, all plugged in...checking phone by calling to my mobile...it was a new, different Bristol number!
Now the rabbit hole starts here:
Calling the Sky 'help line', powered by an AI voice not getting my clear message 'customer advisor please' (usually the shortcut to a human), after going to a long verbal and keypad menu and getting stuck in a loop of 'sorry I didn't get that' , oh wonder; a human female voice.
The Sky employee after acessing my account and listening to my issue and confirming that I clicked all the right boxes in my application, basically said it was a glitch, and from : do you really want to keep to your old number (YES!), to : have you talked to your previous provider (NO, there's no point actually), to : you can cancel your contract.
Then do another contract with us (2 days minumum without any connections) and hope to get the old number back. On pressing how successfull that might be she told me in her experience about 20% successfull .... Enough said really.
How about contacting Offcom I asked, and she said I could not (that's correct according to my later online gleaned info).
How about YOU contacting Ofcom to get my old number released to me, and she said she couldnt do that either.
We will need to get someone else with the authority to escalate it then I told her, again to be told there is nobody to do that ...
It was about 25 minutes in our conversation by then, me trying to keep my cool , politeness, telling her that that I admired her patience and being helpful, but that we needed to get beyond the 'Computer says NO' situation.
And - unbelievably - she then said it COULD get escalated to Ofcom - and that she will instruct a colleague to do that.
It would take 72 hours, and on asking for a confirmation of this 'agreement' she promised to call me back on Monday.
But no Email confirmation etc. when I asked here (so far).
Now, as far as I have found out, a non ported number issue is the responsibilty of the new provider to take up with Ofcom. FULL STOP.
That could and should have been offered immediately after I stated the problem.
Instead I was made to believe that there's nothing they can do etc - see above.
Now, that lady was very polite, but I think she is under orders to fob customers off as much as possible, with the above mentioned evasive non-solutions.
Otherwise, why would she spend such a long time listening to me using all different angles of arguments, pleading and persuasion and her then having to repeat all her different versions of 'the computer says NO'.
I'm baffled, exhausted, maybe a little proud of having (maybe) achieved a little victory against a large corporation like Sky.
Let's see what happens on Monday - I'll post any news here.
Thanks for reading!
