I have given up on Talk Talk after just four months and I'm in the process of switching to Virgin Media. The only problem is that Talk Talk say that they are unable to port the number and I would have to contact BT for this. Of course BT are not willing to do this without me entering into a 12 month contract with them first!!! It's madness!! I rent the line from Talk Talk not BT. Has anyone else had this problem and is there a way out of it?

This is the problem of moving line rental away from BT, it's still BT's line, but your paying the fee to someone else, who then pay BT.

Though are you really sure you want to move phone line to Virgin Media, they are losing thousands of phone customers each quarter as they have the dearest phone service around.

Maybe taking phone line rental back to BT and then putting calls through Primus Saver 2 for free evening and weekend calls and then 18185 for most other calls with free caller display from BT is a better option.

Welcome to the DS forums holistic.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire .......

Save yourself future hassle - move your line rental back to BT and study THIS series of suggestions.

Thanks for this guys. I'll check them out -- but to be honest the reason why I'm choosing Virgin is because I already have the soon to be 20MB cable package which is by far the fastest and most reliable I've experienced and after much haggling, for an extra £1.95 they are offering me line rental and unlimited 01/02 calls. Add to this a mobile phone package of £10 for 300 minutes and 300 texts this works out as a favourable comparison against all the other operators with the added bonus of the best broadband around.

The only downside is having to deal with BT to port my number across to my Virgin line. Surely it is illegal for them to demand a 12 month contract to do this? Can anyone provide any advice on this matter. Many thanks.

No not illegal. Just business.

You could simply just accept a new number and inform others of the change.