Extremely Stressed as my Number is gone..

[whitz00]

Hi guys,

Hope you are well.

My father had a number which was assigned on Vodafone, then later on it was moved to Virgin Media. Then later on, he gifted me the number.  Anyway, I suffered a bereavement a few months ago, and I had to leave the country. Upon checking the SIM, it says emergency calls only, and then when I queried with VM to send me a replacement SIM, they said the number got disconnected in July. I have received ZERO correspondence, no letter, no post, no SMS on my primary number to indicate any sort of disconnection.  They are now saying we do not provide contracts anymore and referred me to o2, but o2 are sending me back.

I am aware the number issue is Vodafone (07436) prefix. I would really need this number back guys and I need your help! I know there are successful stories of people getting their number back. It's only been 3 months, the Vodafone Chat Sales Assistant said we can't help. 

I would appreciate this very much!!

[hrym]

In theory, numbers can't be retrieved, but there have been cases reported here where it's been successful.   lt will depend on whether the number has been reissued.   I think the quarantine period (when they're held in abeyance) is about 3 months, so it's getting close to that.

There's no account access via the forum.   However, if you contact the Social Media team on Facebook or Twitter (@VodafoneUK), they'll be able to take your details privately and see what they can do.   I'm not massively hopeful, but it's worth a shot.

[whitz00]

Thanks for your reply. I've tried contacting them via social media, but they said the same thing. They can't help. And when I call the number, it says Calls are not being connected to this number.. so it hasn't been reissued.

[hrym]

Reading your original post again, I can see that the number has been transferred quite a bit.  Although the prefix indicates that it was originally issued by Vodafone, I'm not sure who would control it as this stage, and that complicates the matter a lot.

I'm slightly at a loss with regard to Virgin, as they seem to be still fully functional and offering contracts and I would assume the number would be in their pool somewhere.  I'm not sure that Vodafone would be able to help at this stage, but I'll try to find out what happens to numbers when they're terminated - whether they go back to the original issuer.

[whitz00]

Yeah.. the number is from Virgin Media Business, where they're not offering contracts and are referring to o2. The Normal Virgin Media are different (residential). They also said they can't help as they don't have access to the Business records.

[hrym]

Ah, right.

I've raised the question of where retired numbers go so that we can at least have an idea of where it may have ended up.

[Rachael]

Hi @hrym 

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, we getting some information on this, once we have an update we shall be in touch.

Rachael

[whitz00]

Thanks Rachel and @hrym. Looking forward to hear some positive results. 

[simax]

A ported in number is generally held in quarantine by the current network for a number of months. This is to allow reactivation amongst other things. After that period of quarantine is over, it’ll be handed back to the original network that issued the number and eventually it’ll be re-issued.