Retaining Virgin Mobile number with Volt

[David2907]

I have been with Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile for many years. I recently took out a Volt package and received an O2 sim card.

In addition, quite recently, Virgin Media migrated my mobile to O2. So, I now have a Volt O2 sim card and a VM/O2 sim card.

The Volt O2 sim card is on an 18 month contract and the VM/O2 sim card is on 30 day contract.

What I want to do is keep the phone number associated with my VM/O2 sim card and move it to the new Volt O2 sim card.

After spending more than an hour on the phone to O2 and being passed between 4 advisors I am no further forward making this happen!

Has anybody managed to do this or have any idea how it can be done.

[pgn]

Guide: Migration & porting into O2  has the guidance normally shared, but VM and a different O2 number may be making things a little complicated for the phone CS staff. You will need to get O2 to do the switch, either in an O2 shop (bring photo id) or via O2's Social Media team, links just below this post. Good luck.

[Breanna]

Were you able to get this sorted @David2907?

[David2907]

No not yet. I went into an O2 shop but they don't have access to the O2 Customer Service system so couldn't do anything. They suggested that I phone 202 again.

I got through to someone eventually who sent me a 'Keep your mobile number' message to fill in with my details and the PAC number of the phone number I want to retain.

However, the message form only has two options 1. Joining O2 from another network or 2. O2 PAYG to pay monthly. 

In my case it is pay monthly to pay monthly!!

Would the second option work if I filled it in?

[Breanna]

What you'd be wanting to do is called a "migration." Is this something they should have been able to sort out in store in your experience @pgn?

[pgn]

Store should be able to do that, in my experience, @Breanna - the self service option in (non-360) MyO2 I have used to Swap from a 4G to a fresh 5G-capable SIM worked well, but may not be of use with the VM SIM in the mix.

[David2907]

After spending many hours on the phone to O2 I understand that what I want to do is not possible at this time due to VM/O2 legacy issues.

The only way that it could be done is to port my VM/O2 number to another provider's SIM and then port it back to the new O2 SIM.

I'll have a think about doing that.

[pgn]

Interesting to see that O2 are encouraging people to leave their network in order to port back in, @David2907 🧐🤐

Search here on the forum for port issues, you can see moves into O2 from some other networks (even if they use O2 infra, eg. Tesco Mobile!) are taking upwards of a week - but you could do that with a PAYG SIM from any network or mobile operator... Just be prepared for delays on the port back in 🫥