on 14th december i was supposed to have my ac transfered from post office home phone to Primus, all seemed ok until 21st december when my line went dead - primus keep telling me that there is a fault on the line, openreach say its a billing issue so i am stuck - i have a dial tone but when i try to dial a number all i get is "this number is not recognised", no one can dial in either

the only thing i can think of is that i subscribed to 18185 the same day, cant find the confirmation or subscription email so cant access my account or contact them as i cant remember my account number

so i am totally confused and feel stuck with regards to what to do

in the interim i have phoned post office and requested them to take back the line but that will take another 10 days :o - primus have been less than useless they have never ever contacted me , i have had to contact them every time and when i do they cant resolve the issue other than to send an engineer out and charge me £60 for the trouble as i know both my line and my equipment are ok
any ideas or suggestions would be really welcome as im now at a total loss as to what to do

many thanks

Hello and welcome to SAYNOTO0870.COM.

I'm not quite sure what the solution may be, but what happens when someone dials your number? Is it busy, not recognised, rings unanswered etc?

You said your line went dead but then you go on to say that you have dial tone. Please can you elaborate.  :-?

If you do have dial tone, then dial 17070 and see if it reads out your number (or perhaps a different number). I anticipate that it may say "This circuit is defined as…" followed by the number. Post back with what happens when you do this.

hi thanks for your quick response, yes i have a dial tone and openreach told me to dial that number and yes it does say its my number - they said its a 'soft' fault and a billing problem but primus are just sending me around in circles so ive sort of given up really!

i have orange broadband and thats working fine, when people try to dial in there is a continuous tone, like the number has been disconnected or something like this

post office home phone have said it will take another 10 days to reconnect me but that because its been such a short time between leaving and re-joining that bt wont charge me £100 plus for the line, i didnt realise that when i left post office i would have to pay if i rejoined - im sure many others dont realise this when they try to go with these (who eventually are not at all) 'cheap' providers!

I am inclined to believe openreach.  If you get a dial tone and the BT line test works fine then my first opinion would be that there was a problem with transferring line over, or a billing problem, or account has been suspended.

Can you make any freephone calls?

Normally when a line is blocked/stopped you have same symptoms as what you experience.  You get a dial tone but incoming/outgoing calls are blocked.  When I recently moved house, the previous owner had a BT line and before I got it switched over to me, I had a dialling tone and could do BT line test (17070) but incoming/outgoing calls were blocked.  Thinking about it, I never did try to see if it would let me dial a freephone number.

nope wont let me dial freephone numbers either, im stuck!

i did think it was because i had subscribed to 18185 but cant find the subscription email and cant contact them as that email is supposed to contain my account number and you cant contact them without an account number (the words head, brick and wall come to mind!)

i have no way of resolving this as primus are worse than useless - i think people should be aware that they will be charged by BT if they try and leave primus once they have similar problems to me!

any more suggestions so i can start the new year and phone all my friends ? :D  

katykitten wrote on Dec 31^st, 2010 at 10:20am:

i did think it was because i had subscribed to 18185 but cant find the subscription email and cant contact them as that email is supposed to contain my account number and you cant contact them without an account number (the words head, brick and wall come to mind!)

Registering with 18185 won't affect the account with your line provider. However, have you tried dialling 18185 as you may be able to use this to make calls in the mean time?

I agree with Dave, I can't see it being related to 18185.

I assume when openreach say "soft" they mean it's not a hardware (ie the line itself) and it's some other fault like the line/account has been put on hold or billing issue.

When you were with HomePhone, was it both calls and landline?

Assuming yes, then has Primus taken over both calls and landline?  

What i'm trying to think of is, Primus can just do calls only but if your line was actually with HomePhone and for somereason only the calls were transferred over to Primus then where is your line?

In addition, are you accessing your broadband via your landline or mobile broadband dongle?

miraculously my phone has started working this pm, must be the positive vibes from this site!  my broadband is via phone connection not dongle, primus were taking over calls and line, as it was with post office home phone

i have now cancelled direct debit to primus so will come accross problems again when they try to deduct my monthly payment OMG this just goes on and on!

katykitten wrote on Dec 31^st, 2010 at 3:54pm:

i have now cancelled direct debit to primus so will come accross problems again when they try to deduct my monthly payment OMG this just goes on and on!

I presume that a cooling-off period applies here and I would notify Primus of the decision to cancel by phoning them and in writing (recorded delivery) if I were you. That way they cannot chase you for payment (assuming you have right to cancel now).

the contract is for a year but as they have provided no service at all i think im prob within my rights to cancel - i have emailed and told them this with no response, they just seem to ignore emails they dont like or cant deal with - who are these people and havent they heard of customer choice and service!!

Dave wrote on Dec 31^st, 2010 at 4:04pm:

katykitten wrote on Dec 31st, 2010 at 3:54pm: i have now cancelled direct debit to primus so will come accross problems again when they try to deduct my monthly payment OMG this just goes on and on! I presume that a cooling-off period applies here and I would notify Primus of the decision to cancel by phoning them and in writing (recorded delivery) if I were you. That way they cannot chase you for payment (assuming you have right to cancel now).

Generally the cooling-off period is only for 14 days and applies from when it is ordered, not when you finally switch over.  It's normally about 2 weeks or so to transfer services over from first notification so any cooling-off period applies whilst awaiting to switch over.

I think it's wrong because you don't know what a company is like c/services, reliability, etc until you finally switch over but by then it's generally too late.

Having read katykitten's experience, you can understand why a lot of people, me included, are reluctant to change Broadband, Land line and Mobile providers. It seems to me to be a lot of hassle and not worth all the stress and inconvenience when it all goes wrong.

On another note, it was revealed last week that 40% of people changing their fuel supplier are no better off after doing so.

Are there any such figures for telecoms services? I suspect similar figures.