Thread: mac number problem

Hi all....
My sister was with AOL as a net provider..she decided to switch to BT and recieved the modem etc but found that AOL had her in a contract for a further 3 months, she sent back the BT modem and cancelled it.
When her AOL account ran out she had been without The net for 4 weeks as AOL had stopped her service because she was in arrears. they gave her the date of when they stopped the service and said she would not need a mac number as her line was now inactive.
2 months ago she took the package out with sky, swithching her phone line and tv to them and also took the net with sky.
Sky can not connect her because they say BT has a tag on the line....she has spent 2 months ringing BT AOL and sky to sort it out.
Sky say they can not do anything till the tag is removed and have spoke to BT who say they do have a tag on it but can only give the mac number to the account holder, but when my sister rings them they say they do not have a tag on the line and that it has to be sky that have the problem.
Aol def dont have a tag on.
she contacted BT wholesale who have said they can not check because she is not a costomer with them and she would have to take out BT internet for them to be able to remove a tag.
Its a nightmare
Oftel/ofcom say they can only get involed once 90 days have lapsed from the initial complaint....She now has 4 pages of names and numbers where she has been passed from one person to another. any ideas where to go from here?

Thanks

easy way to get around it with bt and aol mess ups is to change the landline phone number. we did our contract with aol and for some reason had a tag left on the line in end we changed our number and are with o2 with no problems.

That doesn't always work......

The tag is the responsibility of the people that are connecting you. If you're getting broadband from Sky they should be the ones to deal with the tag. Contact them on 08442 410515

I've also heard similar to craig8661 that resetting the line can get rid of the tag.

Here is Ofcom's webpage on the issue
If you are having problems with ordering Broadband (Tag on the line) | Ofcom

as i say it worked for us. we didnt give the landline number out still dont so the number change did not matter to us. it was some one that worked for bt that told us about the little trick with the phone number.
aol is one company we would never use again even if they paid us.

From experience in the past, getting BT to do a stop / start order on the line has had the desired effect as well.

It can be a lottery sometimes depending on the people you speak to.

The tag is the responsibility of the people that are connecting you. If you're getting broadband from Sky they should be the ones to deal with the tag. Contact them on 08442 410515

This isnt *generally* the case. The new provider can give advice on how to get this removed, however the majority of tag issues nowadays are not actually tags, but still the physical service from the old provider. It is then up to the customer to arrange for this to be removed

Though i do agree there are some cases when the receiving ISP can get these removed, generally when it's a simple issue such as routing still being left on Openreach's systems, or an incorrect ned type marker still present.

thanks for the advice....sky phoned yesterday and said BT had told them they had the Tag..my sister said she was gonna change her number and wey hey, BT took the tag off lol.............thanks peeps