Ported landline not accepting incoming calls for a week

[#1]

Hello, I can see this has happened before e.g. https://community.plus.net/t5/Home-Phone/Ported-Landline-won-t-accept-incoming-calls/m-p/1609341 and it's now happened to us.  An Openreach engineer visited last Thursday 23rd, spent hours on the issue and could find no fault.  They concluded it was an issue with the switchover, and we received a message 

I have been in touch with the Openreach Migrations team who are emailing your old provider to ensure that they have released the telephone number correctly. We will be back in touch on the 25th to check if this has been completed correctly.

Then we received this message

We have had confirmation from our suppliers that your phone fault should now be fixed. We have checked the line and everything appears to be in order but we are not able to account for every eventuality. If your service is still not working please get back in touch and we will be happy to investigate further for you.  *INTERNAL* Main Fault Location: CA (Fault located at customer apparatus (appointment required)) Fault Code: NDT (No Dial Tone) Clear Code: 4.4 Clear Message: Exchange Main Distribution Frame - Terminations, Fuses or Protector Modules If there is anything else that we can help with then please do not hesitate to get back in touch. You can reply to this ticket through the Member Centre Contact us facility or you can call us on 0800 432 0200

I emailed Plusnet to say it's definitely not resolved, no reply.  We had not heard from Plusnet so I called yesterday and spoke to a helpful lady who has reopened it and arranged another Openreach engineer visit for next week.  But we don't need another visit, we just need whatever they recommend to be done.

As I explained to the lady yesterday, this is my mum's landline, she's 84 and mobile phones are not in her skill set, people have been unable to reach her since the switchover a week ago and are worried.  Is there someone from Plusnet that can resolve it quickly please, before another engineer turns up? Question ID is 231855690.

Thanks

[#2]

@AHMH4HH  Welcome to the Community forums.

As there is already an engineer booked to look at this there is little else that can be done at the moment. ‘Engineer visit’ includes investigating faults at the exchange as well as your home.

For information, Plusnet do not respond to emails, unless you ring in the best course of action is to reply to the ticket.

[#3]

Thanks for the reply @Baldrick1  - I got the impression there was a Plusnet help team from here https://community.plus.net/t5/Home-Phone/Ported-Landline-won-t-accept-incoming-calls/m-p/1609341

Has the Plusnet Help team has been discontinued?

[#4]

@AHMH4HH 

There is still a Help Team here but they are very thin on the ground, especially at the weekends. If this is an exchange or infrastructure fault then all that they can do is report it to Openreach, who own and maintain the service. This you have already instigated.

Be assured that if one of the help team do come along and pick up this thread they will ignore anything that I have posted.

I'm not sure of the relevance of your link to a four year old thread.

[#5]

@AHMH4HH The Help Team still exists. It is much smaller now, and almost invisible at weekends.

[#6]

Thanks @jab1 and @Baldrick1 I'll see what they say tomorrow.

@Baldrick1 the 4 year old link was the closest I could find to my issue and showed it had been resolved by the support team, hence my query about whether they still exist.  Apologies for trying to do some work before posting a new issue, I won't bother next time.

[#7]

@AHMH4HH 

If I have ruffled your feathers then I'm sorry, it was totally unintentional. What I was trying to point out is that by reporting it by phone you have got ahead of any response time wise that you would have received on this forum, especially if an Openreach engineer is booked to look into the problem for you tomorrow.

If this does not fully resolve the issue then do report it on the ticket and come back here, quoting the ticket number, where no doubt it will be picked up by the Help Team in due course.

[#8]

OK thanks & thanks for responding so quickly - the Openreach engineer is booked for Tuesday, more than a week since the service was lost, hence feathers already ruffled and suspecting incompetence.  In my experience elsewhere, forum responses can be more effective than calls to first line support (not necessarily quicker but more likely to be successful).  If it was just me I'd suck it up and welcome the lack of spam calls, but it's my mum, who relies on that landline. With any luck it'll be fixed tomorrow if Openreach follow up on their visit last week.

[#9]

@AHMH4HH 

Your mum’s fault according to your original post is the lack of a dial tone. The posts that you tagged relates to the failure to receive calls. This could well be a hardware problem in the exchange rather than a porting configuration  problem,  especially if your mum has transferred from a LLU provider. Hopefully this will be resolved on Tuesday. 

I would agree with you that posts on this forum are more likely to lead to a successful resolution quickly once that they are addressed. Apart from the help team, there are some very knowledgeable fellow customers around who will advise and also help with some issues.

If the problem is not fixed on Tuesday then it would be worth you pointing out to Plusnet that your mum is vulnerable and needs her phone fixing as a priority.

[#10]

@AHMH4HH 

There can be a number of different issues which might give rise to identical symptoms.

You make clear that the number has been ported, but not from where it was ported.  Not all number ports have the same characteristics; number ports from Sky have been seen to be problematic.

You do not make clear if no one can dial in or just some people cannot dial in.  People on different networks (Sky / Now / Talk Talk / Virgin Media / Mobiles) might have markedly different experiences to those on the BT Network.

You do not indicate the experience of those attempting to dial the ported number - any of the following (which each has a different cause) matches your description (symptom)...

• The number dialled is reported as invalid
• The caller is advices that there is a fault and the call cannot be connected
• The caller hears ringing tone but the called party does not
• The caller always hears an engaged tone

Only the first above is likely to be a number porting failure, the rest will probably need an engineer.

"...for a week" might infer that there has been a change in state - that is prior to a week ago all worked well (with Plusnet) - which would also point away from a porting issue.

[#11]

Thanks for the detailed reply, @Townman 

- previous ISP was TalkTalk and had been for many years but at sign up we were told by Plusnet that the line was Virgin

- I cannot comment on whether different networks can dial in, but I know no one has been able to dial in since the switch at the beginning of last week.  Several in your list definitely do not work and I would assume none do

- the experience is the same as a previous post https://community.plus.net/t5/Home-Phone/Can-not-receive-incoming-calls-on-Plusnet-landline-after/m-..., a female voice message "the number you have dialled is currently not receiving incoming calls.  Please try again later" - so maybe the second in your list?  The incident was called a "broken migration" in that thread, which I know is more than 3 years old but "on the shoulders of giants"...

- the change of state was switching from TalkTalk to Plusnet, since then incoming calls have not worked

I will post back when this is resolved

PS I forgot to add, an Openreach engineer already visited once last week and found no faults

[#12]

I should have asked a clearer question - can outbound calls be made?

If yes, does the receiving party see the correct number?

[#13 · Accepted solution]

Hi @AHMH4HH 

I'm really sorry to hear this has happened and for the inconvenience, it's causing your mum.

I'll be sending you a private message shortly. If you can respond to that as soon as possible I'll get this chased up for you 

[#14]

I said I would post an update.  The landline started receiving calls this Monday 6th March, 2 weeks from the start of the Plusnet service.  The underlying issue was the number not being released by Virgin, although the switch was from TalkTalk to Plusnet.

[#15]

Glad it's all sorted. Do you need us for anything else at the moment?