NOW TV emailed me on 26th Feb letting me know that my contract would be ending in a month, they gave me a phone number to call to discuss my options. I rang and found myself talking to a SKY sales person. They offered me a very competitive package for TV, Broadband and landline but said I would have a new landline number. I said "no" because it's important for personal and business reasons that I keep the number that I've had for many years. I was put on hold for a couple of minutes and was then told that I could keep my number, so I said "yes" and installation/ transfer was booked for 17th March.
The Openreach engineer turned up but the external cabling work had not been done and the router had not come by post although the TV box and controller had, so he went away.
Next day got a call from SKY to advise that my order would have to be cancelled and then remade so that a router could be sent. Today got a call from SKY and went through the whole order process (T's & C's, ID etc) again and again got confirmation that I could keep my old number. Shortly afterwards got confirming email and text and in the same minute an email and text asking me to contact them as there was a problem with my order. Rang again , the request to port the number had been refused by a "third party " and my order had been automatically cancelled but did I want to keep the TV package? I said "no" and found myself transferred to a "VIP customer services lady" who listened to my story and was very friendly and sympathetic. She put me on hold and when she came back she said she'd found a way to fix it so I could keep my number - went through the whole order process again and even as we were talking got the confirmation email and .... you've guessed it - another email saying there was a problem! She put me on hold again and after a couple of minutes came back and said that each time it had been NOW refusing to release the number!!! She agreed with me that it seemed crazy that their sister company was refusing to cooperate but there was nothing she could do but did I want to keep the SKY TV package? When I said "no" she offered to transfer me to the NOW customer retention team to see if I could reverse my cancellation and keep my old number. I could and re contracted for another 12 months. NOW also said that the number transfer problem was a known technical issue and that they had not "refused" the transfer. So 20 emails, 11 texts and 4 long phone calls later I'm back where I started!
My questions/ observations are:
1) Why did I find my call to NOW hijacked by SKY? I know the companies are connected but SKY used this call, that I thought would be with NOW, to make a very persuasive sales pitch to dump their sister company and move to them? NOW must know that this is going on, so what's the SKY/NOW game plan here?
2) Why did no one at SKY know about the number porting problem. A problem which I can now see on this forum and others has been around for some years?
or should I be asking:
1) Are SKY sales teams targeted/incentivised to get "sign-ups" and tell the customer whatever they need to hear to get them?
2) Do all the SKY employees know about the number porting problem but hope that by giving you the " run around" they will wear you down to the point where you give in and take a new landline number
