Taking Over a Business? Don’t Let a Phone Line Transfer Hold You Up

A small hospitality business recently went through an experience worth flagging for anyone buying, selling, or taking over a business with an existing phone line and EFTPOS connection: a straightforward request to transfer the service to a new owner turned into a 56-minute hold, a misrouted call to the wrong department, and a disconnection with no follow-up — despite the provider holding the customer’s full contact details on file.

It’s a support failure rather than a technical one, but the practical impact is the same either way: no working phone line, and no working EFTPOS terminal, during exactly the period a new owner most needs both.

Why this keeps happening

Ownership changeovers sit in an awkward spot for a lot of telecom providers. They’re not a brand-new connection (which has its own well-worn process) and they’re not a simple like-for-like account update (which is usually automated). A changeover means updating billing details, re-verifying identity, and often re-routing the request between teams that handle “new business connections” and teams that handle “existing account changes” — and if the request lands with the wrong team first, it’s easy for it to get stuck.

For a business that depends on its phone line and EFTPOS connectivity to actually trade — which describes most hospitality, retail, and trade businesses — that delay isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s lost sales, every hour the line is down.

What to check before a changeover, not during one

If you’re buying a business, taking over a lease with existing services, or restructuring ownership of an existing one, a few questions are worth asking the current provider (or your own, if you’re planning to switch) well before settlement day:

Is this a standard ownership transfer, or does it need to go through as a new connection? The answer changes both the timeline and which team should be handling it. Get this confirmed in writing if you can, rather than assuming either way.

What’s the actual service-level commitment for this kind of request? Local number portability — moving your existing number to a new provider or account — has its own set rules and processes, and ACMA sets out exactly how porting a phone number is meant to work: porting a customer’s phone number. An ownership transfer isn’t quite the same as a port, but asking the provider to confirm their own internal timeframe for it gives you something concrete to hold them to if it runs long.

Do you have a direct contact, not just a general support queue? A lot of these failures come down to a request getting stuck in a generic queue with no single person accountable for seeing it through. Ask for a reference number and, if possible, a named contact for the changeover specifically.

Is there a fallback for the transition period? If there’s any chance the line could be down for a day or more during the handover, it’s worth having a temporary mobile forwarding number ready to go, so customers and suppliers aren’t met with a dead line during exactly the period you’re trying to establish the business under new ownership.

The bottom line

None of this guarantees a smooth changeover — provider-side process failures happen regardless of how well you prepare. But asking the right questions before settlement, rather than discovering the gaps mid-transfer, is the difference between a short delay and a 56-minute hold with no callback during your first week of trading.