Not receiving SMS from Hospital and others since porting in to Vodafone!

[_Paul_]

Hello,

I have ported from O2 to Vodafone recently and since then dont receive SMS from PayPal & more importantly my Hospital, there are probably others who I'm not aware of also.

Google shows many other Vodafone customers are also facing same problem, this forum is littered with many posts on the subject.

Just spent an hour and a half on the "Tobi" chat to "Ranjodh" who tried turning on and off premium text in my account, he had me taking my sim out rebooting my phone....basically I dont think he had a clue and at the end of an hour and a half couldn't drop the chat fast enough.

A very helpful lady at PayPal told me exactly what the problem was it seems Vodafone have to turn on "short-code"  messaging but this seems to be beyond Vodafone's "tech support" to resolve, I imagine the poor chap Ranjodh was tweaking every lever inside his limited account "dashboard" to no avail when I suspect it's something more fundamental perhaps some kind of server issue?

Never had this issue with any previous provider and I've had a mobile phone since the days of the Motorola "brick".

Has anyone had any luck resolving this issue?

Or am I going to have to switch providers again.

Any and all useful help gratefully received.

Paul

[Tal]

Hi @_Paul_ . Thank you for letting us know about the SMS issues you're facing, this is not the experience we want a new customer to have with us. From what you have described, this may be a split service issue where not all the number files have been ported over to us. Please contact our team on Social Media and they'll be able to raise this to the Porting team and request and missing files from O2.

Tal

[_Paul_]

Hi @Tal 

Thanks for that, I  have already been in touch with the social media team and they have further escalated it to their "port in" team who will contact my previous provider (O2) I now have to wait 72 hours for a response.

Looks like I haven't had any OTP messages since 13th May!

I need to access my hospital "outpatient portal" and can't do so without OTP.

PayPal I can work around by using WhatsApp but there are probably others that have sent me OTP messages I cannot see since being ported in to Vodafone.

Paul 

[_Paul_]

My OTP problem has gotten worse! 

(original thread here Not receiving SMS from Hospital and others since porting in to Vodafone! )

Trying to buy insurance online today and get this error: "Payment Failed" it seems that my bank couldn't verify the transaction as it couldn't detect a valid mobile phone! so an hour on the phone to my bank and the very helpful chap tells me this kind of error is linked somehow to OTP.....

What a nightmare Vodafone has turned into!

I've spent the better part of the week chatting to one Vodafone social media agent or another and performing all manner of sim swaps/phone changes/account tweaks all to no avail the current agent Jade is now trying to give the problem to Vodafone's network people.... who require screenshots of any issues as "evidence"

I really wish I had stayed with O2

[Gemma]

Hi @_Paul_  thanks for the example you've posted. This isn't the experience we expect for our customers and I can understand how important it is to be able to receive the OTP's. I can see Jade is talking to you through our Social platform and I'm liaising with her about this. I'm unable to discuss the details here for security reasons, although she'll be back in touch as soon as there's an update. 

[_Paul_]

Hi Gemma,

Thanks for the response, Jade has now sent mail to Vodafone's "Network Team" and will update me.

Just doing a recap, so far affected systems are:
*Hospital patient portal (OTP fail)
*Online banking (OTP fail)
*PayPal (OTP fail)
*Online insurance purchase fail (Invalid phone number)
So by extension *any* online card purchase will fail as they all rely on a valid Visa password and a valid phone number.

I thought hospital access and PayPal were an issue but this really is a much more serious problem now.

Regards

Paul

[_Paul_ · Accepted solution]

Update:

After I provided evidence the Network Team raised a case and I was given a fault number on Thursday 18th around 4pm with promise of an update on Monday 22nd.

On Friday around 4:30pm I started getting test SMS messages from both EE & O2 and then a subsequently a call from a "Lee" around 18:00 19th July on an O2 number? to say the problem looks fixed.

She went on to explain:

Despite being "ported" to a new carrier evidently whichever provider originally owned the number range your phone has your service continues to be routed through them to your current carrier.

Seems there were some issues with my previous provider O2 forwarding SMS & OTP and this broke my OTP messages.

Current tests with the hospital patient system work perfectly, I won't know for certain about other services (PayPal & Bank etc.) until I have occasion to use them.

And as promised on Monday I had a follow up message from Vodafone's social team checking all was good.

I must give sincere thanks all the Vodafone social team people I have chatted to on X (Twitter) who collectively effectively resolved this.

Regards 

Paul 

[japitts]

---

@_Paul_ wrote:

Despite being "ported" to a new carrier evidently whichever provider originally owned the number range your phone has your service continues to be routed through them to your current carrier.

---

This is true, except for "on-net" traffic from the same operator. Most operators have a flag set for "don't route this call externally"

[donnyguy]

Number porting is a pain. The way it was built in the UK does mean split ports are a common occurrence and does quite often require manual intervention from the number range owner as well as the gaining provider. 

This isn’t a Vodafone issue, more industry. The bit that frustrates me from a customer perspective is when it does happen. You end up speaking to front line customer care who, when you even tell them it’s a split port, they behave as if its the first time they’ve ever heard of it and it’s an effort to get things escalated to the porting team. 

For me, I can live with blips like this if you know the right people are going to sort it (and they ultimately will once they’re aware)

[_Paul_]

Split porting does seem something of a rigmarole to resolve for what appears to be quite a common problem, if god forbid it happens again I will at least have some idea which direction to take.

A "sticky" outlining the possible symptoms and suggested actions would be good.

Your "Nick" Donnyguy ?.... from Doncaster by any chance? for my sins I grew up in South Kirkby not too far from "Donny".

Regards

Paul