trying to recover lost landline number:URGENT

[red-green]

This is urgent: I lost my landline number on 11th of December 2024 when my EE account was transferred by EE, without my consent, to BT, with whom I previously had my account. The account was immediately transferred back and there was no problem with the broadband, but I have not had a working phone since then.

I have made endless calls to EE/BT and as a last resort they are sending me a new BT phone. They wanted to give me a temporary number and then reinstate my old number but they haven't be able to do this and they don't understand why. They say the phone should be working but it isn't.

I had transferred from copper to full fibre a while back, months before 11th December, and the phone worked fine, so moving from copper to fibre isn't the problem.

What worries me is that looking online this morning I have seen posts saying that after 30 days a number cannot be retrieved, so perhaps I have about 24 hours to get this sorted.

We have had this number for 60 years so losing it would be a disaster. My whole experience with EE has been a disaster. I moved from BT to EE: they keep insisting they are the same company but why then are problems such as this arriving?

I have tried so hard to get this sorted and his post is a last shot. I do hope someone can help me.

Many thanks

red green

[XRaySpeX]

Was this landline number with EE before all this happened? Was in on DV?

[red-green]

Yes, it was an EE account and I moved from copper to fibre (DV) in 2023.

[XRaySpeX]

Just to check, I'm asking about the landline, not the BB.

[red-green]

My understanding is that once you went from copper to Fibre everything is digital, is that correct? I have BB and a landline, and there hasn't been a problem with the broadband through all of this. Problem is only with the phone, which was working perfectly until 11th December.

Thank you

[JimM11]

@red-green Your post is very conflicting in what you are saying, they moved, you moved, so hard to work out, but your number may be safe, dial it and if someone picks up then it is gone to you!

[red-green]

It is EE/BT who are causing confusion here, not me! I am trying to keep things as clear as I can.

Once again: my entire EE account, landline and broadband were ported to BT on 11th December and almost immediately ported back.

The broadband still worked after this but landline didn't, and hasn't worked since then.

I'm looking for a solution to get the old number back before it is too late.

Number has not be reallocated.

[Peter_W]

Good afternoon @red-green, welcome to the EE Community.

I totally get your concern with this one, especially if you've had this number for such a long period.

At what point was it that the number you want to keep was lost? 

Do you know if this was at the switch from EE to BT, or did it reach BT then not come back across after that?

What was the last update you had from our team about this too, and was any reason given for why your service switched over and back in the first place?
Peter

[red-green]

Thank you, Peter.

My experience with EE was so bad that eventually an agent and his manager suggested on 3rd December that I move back to BT, with whom I had had previously had an account. I thought this was an odd idea and could cause problems. (How right I was!)

We arranged that I would think about this and the agent would call me again on 11th December. Between 3rd and 11th I looked into moving to a new provider but it was so close to Christmas I decided I wanted to park it until January 2025. (Problems I was having were mostly admin, billing, etc, phone and broadband did work at that time.)

I waited on 11th to tell EE I wanted to hold fire for the time being and for them not to move me but no call came, when I tried to call someone later that day the phone wasn’t working.

In the course of subsequent calls to customer service I was told what I outlined above: the account was ported to BT on 11th and then ported back but moving the landline back was unsuccessful. I think it all happened very quickly indeed, as I never noticed a break in service with the broadband.

I was last in touch with EE about this yesterday and I had an engineer out earlier in the week. No one seems to be able to find out what the problem is and how to solve it.

I will be very upset if that number is gone. Thank you for your help.

Sent from Outlook for iOS<>

[XRaySpeX]

I'm not sure. Full Fibre BB is a separate thing to DV. I know there are users with DV but running with FTTC BB. I'm not sure you can have the opposite of an analogue landline (from a traditional phone socket) with Full Fibre (from an ONT) & even it is physically possible whether EE would supply it.. @JimM11 : Would you know?