About ending phone contract

[tigwig76]

I have a contract with three on my teenage daughter's behalf. The weekend before last she had a mishap with water and her phone and the end result was it no longer worked!! The contract ends in a few months anyway so I said she can either pay to upgrade or swap providers and pay the rest of the contract off. She chose the latter. I phoned 3 to inform them I wanted to terminate the contract and was given a settlement figure. I spoke to someone for about 15 minutes and they asked me if my dd wanted to keep the same number. I wasnt sure but said maybe. They said they would send the PAC code I would need to do so. Just before the call ended I reiterated that the contract was definitely cancelled on that date and that there was nothing else I needed to do and I would pay the early termination fee on the next billing date. After the call ended I realised they were sending the pac code via text which I couldn't get as the phone was broken but didn't think it mattered as dd decided she didn't want the same number anyway. I didn't want to call back as it had taken them 45 minutes to answer the call!
So fast forward to today I notice the normal amount of monthly billing has gone out of my bank and not the termination figure I expected. I phoned and was told the contract wasnt yet cancelled as I hadn't authorised the pac code or something? I explained the previous call and that as far as I was concerned the contract should have been ended then and also that the phone was inaccessible so I never got it anyway.
I was told basically tough. I've paid a bill to cover up til 15th Oct and they want another £50 on top to terminate. This is nearly £30 more than the original figure given. I tried to escalate to a manager after a frustrating 25 minute conversation and was finally told one would phone me back in 24 - 48 hrs. She then repeated the phone number....yes the broken one. Clearly not listening to a word I say!
Sorry that's so long and thanks if you're still reading. AIBU to want the monthly payment deducting off the early termination fee as I was told the contract was cancelled?

You could have put the SIM card into an old phone and got the pac code. I don't think you will have much luck as you didn't receive the pac code.

Check the terms and conditions of the original contract. However that is the way it works, on the day your pac is used to move your number over your contract is automatically cancelled with 3. If the pac code is never used, your original contract remains until you do. The reason they do this is because once a contract is cancelled, the number cannot be retrieved. So it does automatically once the number moved to the new provider.
If you had wanted a new number than they would have cancelled the contract straightaway.
It sounds like 3 didn't go into detail about this. They would have assumed that you would have cancelled the contract by porting the number across.

Might be worth making an official complaint stating that it wasn't made clear that using the pac code cancels the contract and you had been told it would cancel regardless.

If you'd said no to the PAC code it would've terminated then or on the end of the billing cycle/month, you said yes to the PAC code, in order for that number to be usable it had to transfer from one network to the other, it can only do that live so to speak. You can't terminate a number then resurrect it on a new network a month later, ok you've decided you don't want the number but that's not what you told them when you first called.

Right I see. I didn't understand that at all unless I would have called them back to confirm she no longer wanted that number. I do think the adviser should have made that clear though.
We also tried putting a different sim in to retrieve the text and it didn't work.
I'm guessing I'll end up paying it all then it just seems unfair when it wasnt made clear.