Tangled. 3 contracts.

[#1]

I knew we had to move and had so many calls in last 4 months I went looking.
I didn't know this forum was here. Been with plusnet all 12 years.
Found xln for small business. 20 Dec signed up. 3rd Jan put in broadband. Phone with another company and it turned it off. Engineer also took the plusnet router with him. As a cafe we need phone line. Sorted engineer for Next day - different one, phone sorted but Internet down. So no internet since then.
Tuesday phone call from plusnet moving people over to BT. He said next payment due. It's just gone out. Xln don't have the contract. So I can move to bt and stay similar. If they cannot connect then xln probably forgot to tell them.
I am at my wits end. Business takings low. So worried. What is real?

[#2]

@Sparklezombie 

It is not clear from your post whether the three tangled contracts relate to a single business service previously provided by Plusnet Business or there were multiple Plusnet contracts?

Do any of these options apply:

1. Did you have more than one contract with Plusnet. If so please clarify.
2. Did your Plusnet contract provide both a phone and Internet connection? Or,
3. Did you have a Plusnet Internet connection and a phone contract with a third party?
4. Are you trying to get one company to provide a telephone service using you old landline number and another an Internet connection?

[#3]

@Sparklezombie 

Edited.

Reading your post in a bit more detail, If your phone line went off on the 3rd January and is currently in quarantine then you have only a few  weeks to get it transferred to a VoIP provider or it will be lost to you for ever.

[#4]

Irrespective of this being a business account, it falls into the generic quagmire of migrating from broadband and phone with the same ISP/CP to broadband and (digital) phone with separate ISP and CP providers.

The move of either broadband or telephone will cease the other service, regardless of in-flight plans to do both gracefully separately.  The big risk is that users WILL lose their phone line service / number for sometime (possibly entirely) if transferring to separate providers.  For a business, the loss of the telephone service could be a business killer.

The telecoms industry needs to enable a migration journey, which allows the CP (telephone service / number) to be migrated to a digital provider WITHOUT also terminating the broadband service.  That should have an automatic fall-back to a SoGEA (FTTC without telephone) service.

I have a business service for a country pub to migrate; it is heavily dependent on its landline phone (number) service and I'm very apprehensive about how that might pan out.  I am not going to be 'blackmailed' into being forced to go with BT Business, for I have seen too many reports of they fouling up the journey.

[#5]

The part of the story I don't understand is how the second engineer managed to restore a working phone line ?

The original analogue landline (excluding the quarantined number) would have been permanently lost on a move of the broadband service due to the 5th September 2023 PSTN 'stop sell',  but then we're told the engineer got a working phone line BUT from that moment the internet didn't work - so I'd assume that the now working phone isn't VoIP (as that would need internet).

Was there a second working analogue landline available that the engineer plugged the phone into ?

Is the now working phone the original number, or is it a new number ?

[#6]

@Anonymous 

Maybe the third party has switched the line to a VoIP phone only with no Internet service. BT offer this for those who don’t wat any Internet. https://www.bt.com/landline/deals/

[#7]

it falls into the generic quagmire

@Townman I like that😀 an apt description of the situation...

[#8]

@Sparklezombie 

This discussion has triggered me into producing this https://community.plus.net/t5/Everything-else/The-Problem-with-Separate-Phone-and-Internet-Providers...