BT call out charge

fluffster32

Hi I hope someone can advise me, I know its similar to others but i ust wanted to check something.
When I first moved into this property 2007 there was a BT line already in and the two sockets, one in front room & one in back room were BT, although the back room one didn't work.
At the beginning of last year i switched to Virgin and same thing used front room socket as back room socket not working.
At the beginning of this year I wanted to switch everything to sky but was told needed to be with BT, so I switched back to them for 12 months.
Within a day or two of phone line back on with BT I had friends ringing my mobile asking why I won't pick up the landline, I hadn't heard it ring.
So I rang my landline off my mobile and same thing happened, it was ringing but the landline wasn't. So I picked it up to dial out and no dial tone.
I rang BT they tested it and said there was a fault on the line they'd send an engineer.
Engineer came, turned out the front room socket had been switched off by virgin and the back room socket had been switched on!!!!
I didn't even know they could do this.
Engineer assured me I wouldn't be charged.....LOL!!
I got the bill this morning - £115 call out charge added!
BT told me I haven't been charged for work (which is good as there wasn't any!) just call out!
I explaned I was on income support how did they expect me to pay this and I was told to "go get a loan of a mate or someone"!!!
Is this fair?
The back room socket has never worked and suddenly it does and I have the privilege of paying for the discovery.

iniltous

Just to clarify, when you were a Virgin Media customer were you a 'cable' customer or were VM a service provider using BT's lines ??
If you were cable then VM should fit and use there own sockets, not use the BT ones.....
If VM were a Service Provider ( much like you want Sky, using the BT network,) then VM would never have visited your property so how did
they switch the non working socket into the working one ???
When you reported the BT line faulty they would have told you to identify the main BT socket and try from there, were you told to try this ??
Although it may not be the case with you, I know of cases where someone goes back to BT from cable, the line doesnt work so they call out BT and all the engineer needs to do is move the phone from the cable companys socket into the BT socket, and in the past the engineer would have had a laugh with the end user over it, these days that would be chargeable as the visit did cost BT money and it wasnt a BT fault

fluffster32

I was a cable customer with virgin and they did not come out to property so I guess they used BT's.
Haven't a clue about the sockets I didn't even know you could switch one off!
BT did ask me to identify main socket and I told them the front room as the one in back had never worked before. They never asked me to try it out