Issues with keeping phone number on joining Plusnet

[#1]

I joined plusnet on 14/10/21. From EE. (I was already a plusnet mobile customer).

I was told that they could not port over my old landline number straight away and that I would be given temporary number and that it would switch over  to my original in 24 to 48 hours.

Strangely before the switch to plusnet  they sent me a letter ( addressed to "the occupier")  saying someone had requested my number and asking me to contact them to confirm that I was or was not moving house, which I am not.  So I contacted them and they said not to worry its just a security thing!

So all seemed well until 48 hours had passed and my old number had not been reinstated.

I spoke to customer services on the 16th and they said they would look into the issue and get back to me by end of today (19th).

Now they are telling me that they have my old number but it is in "quarantine" as they call it and they cannot reinstate it until the 28th / 29th.  So 2 weeks instead of the original 2 days to change back.

They were not able to explain why it could not be accessed until then.

Any ideas why it will take so long?

PP

[#2]

Thanks for your post @Parso444 and welcome to our Community Forums.

I'm really sorry to see we changed your number when you moved across to us.

When a phone number's ceased it goes into a quarantine period or what our suppliers also refer to as a 'cooling off period' for 14 days. This is a period of time it stays with the last provider who had the number in case they want it back. 

After this time, the number's then returned to whoever first made it (known as the rangeholder), in this case, that's BT. 

As we use BT's network, we're free to take any numbers which aren't currently assigned to a line. 

I can though see we've managed to get your number back this morning, so it looks like we got in touch with our suppliers and they had released your number from the last provider for us quicker than the standard 14 days. 

Ideally this shouldn't have happened in the first instance as we should've retained your number while taking over your line. Looking into the root cause, the problem was that your number was attached to a free account from a very long time ago, so we weren't able to set up your broadband account with it initially.

I've removed your number from the legacy free account now so you shouldn't have this issue again.

Really sorry for the inconvenience. Let us know if you have further issues or there's anything else you'd need help with.