Some people have no choice.Can’t believe people still use ADSL
I love the way you have turned a simple mistake into this massive conspiracy..... you cant go through life like this surely?I really don't expect someone to steal my phoneline do I?
I'm sick of nonsense marketing spam so I read hardly any email anymore
I love the way you have turned a simple mistake into this massive conspiracy..... you cant go through life like this surely?
Definitely go to the police. Make sure you take your keyboard with you too. If they don't believe you, start waving it at them until they take you seriously.If it turns out to have been requested by a person who lives in my area, then I have to go to the police too.
Consider if someone was able to phone up your electricity provider and arrange to have your house disconnected from the grid. With no checks or balances and no authenticcation, all you get is an email which you miss. Suddenly you are plunged into darkness and the electric company tells you it will be 2 weeks to reconnect you. Sound ridiculous? Yes, it should. Because it is.
It's not an essential utility. It's a convenience. If it's essential, ie. you will lose money thru not having a internet connection, then get a business line with appropriate levels of support. If you're on a domestic service then all you can reasonably be miffed about is a few days of losing Netflix and DebbieDoesStrangeThingsWithAvocados on YouTube.
Crack out your phone with 4G and get on with your life.
Whoever ordered your line moved needed nothing much more than postcode, house number or existing telephone line.
Called them straight away and was told that they were doing what I had asked. Eventually after many calls and emails they suggested someone had given another provider my gas meter number by mistake, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. Took ages to sort out...
Ludicrous.
Indeed it is.
The process was already underway when I received the letter so it would make sense to have some form of check with the account holder as soon as a request is put through.
Can’t believe people still use ADSL
They do check. By emailing or sending you a text message. As I said above large ISP's will receive dozens if not hundreds of cease requests on a daily basis, 90%+ of which are genuine transfers to other providers. Should they be calling every one? OFCOM rules state they're not allowed to constantly call or harass leaving customers as well. This is clearly an accident by someone who gave the wrong details on a new order with another provider. If anything the new company should have picked this up as a potential issue rather than the losing provider. I know Virgin and ourselves conduct checks to make sure the postcode, address and house number all match before transferring a service but it does happen, especially on new builds.
We understand this is what currently happens, but I am not alone in believing it is in error. It is placing competition in the market above sense.
I don't have a solution and I have been on the recieving end of the old way of MAC codes and moving into a house when the previous party had not released the broadband yet. It took over a month to get the broadband on. However in those days your phone and broadband where separate. So once you got through BT and managed to get the BT line changed over the broadband followed as you had proof the line was in your name as they could check with BT.
I don't believe the current solution is viable. There needs to be some form of check. Even if it is to check if the current broadboard is active. If it is, then further consideration should be carried out.
Remember there are different types of switch. Changing provider is only one of them. Moving house is another. It is this one I was worried about. This involves lifting the package including the landline number and moving it to a different address, keeping the number and service otherwise intact. In this case you know the person SHOULD live at the old address at this moment so they SHOULD be able to verify they do at the point they make the order.
This is the original ofcom proposal in 2013.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/consumer-switching-review
If you read it you might note that it focuses entirely on making switching easier and provide very little protection against malicious or accidental switching.
BTW, email is not a reliable form of communication, I believe it is estimated that as much as 25% of non-spam emails are dropped before the recipient in question gets it. Thus it should not be used to communicate important information to consumers.
I don't follow you at all - say somebody maliciously transfers your line/broadband to another provider, you ignore/miss the notification, and it goes through. They're then paying for your service and getting nothing out of it.
Why would they do it?
Be interested to see where that 25% failure rate on legitimate emails comes from as well, it sounds very wrong (assuming each end is configured correctly, which if we are saying is an ISPs customer messaging platform to a service like Gmail would likely be the case).
You work in email surveillance for a bank, but ignore all your own emails and think they are spam?
Why did they hire you... Not very analytical is it lol