“Thousands” of Vodafone customers hit with porting delays

Operator says it is “close” to resolving issue which has seen customers wait months for their number ot be ported in from other networks

Vodafone says it is close to resolving ongoing issues with number porting which have affected thousands of customers in recent months.

The problems has seen customers waiting months in some case for their numbers to be transferred from other providers.

The delays are in breach of Ofcom guidelines that says the process should be completed within 24 hours. The regulator told Mobile News it was “concerned” about the reports and says it will be speaking to the operator.

The operator blamed “cross network” issues earlier in the year – something denied by EE, Three and O2 – and a new billing system for the delays.

Several Vodafone customers even appeared on last night’s episode of BBC Watchdog, with one saying she tried to cancel her contract after months of delays only for the operator to threaten her with debt collection actions.

Vodafone says that a “small percentage” have been affected and that the problem was now “essentially clear” follow- ing the formation of a dedicated team to deal with the issue.

However, this week message boards were awash with customers criticising Vodafone over the delays. One had first reported the issue in mid-April.

A spokesperson for Vodafone said: “Once we identified there was increasing customer feedback on this issue we invested in a specialist team who have focused on reducing the backlog of customers affected and improving the overall process for the future: that team has already achieved significant improvements on both aspects.”