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£116 call out + £99 an hour = bill shock
When Pauline Catterall's phone developed a fault she had no idea it would end up with her being landed with a shock bill for more than £200.
The angry BT customer contacted the Consumer Champion for help after a problem dating back to September.
Explaining what happened retired Mrs Catterall contacted BT in September after she was left without a telephone line for three days.
She said: "I had been experiencing problems with my telephone and so I rang BT who checked for faults on the line.
"They told me that they would have to send out an engineer and when he came to the house he found a fault on an adapter on my upstairs telephone.
"When he had finished the work I asked him how much I owed and he told me that there would be a charge but that I would receive a bill.
"When I opened the invoice for 239.82 I nearly died and rang BT straight away to ask about the charges. I was told that I had to pay a 116 call out fee and then 99 an hour for the work.
"I wasn't happy and contacted the enquiry line and they said that I would have been informed about the call out charge and that I had to pay it.
"I would never have agreed to pay so much money and would never have let them into my house if I had known."
Mrs Catterall was due to start paying the bill back at 57-a-month from January – an increase of 46 on her normal bill.
She added: "I have never been in debt in my life and I tried to tell the operators that I was on a pension.
"What made it worse was that I also had trouble with my Freeview box and when an engineer came out to fix that I told him all about my problems and he said it would only have cost 6 to fix the adaptor.
"The people at BT claim that the charges were properly explained to me and that they have a recording, but when I asked for a copy of the tape they said it had been lost."
Hearing Mrs Catterall's plight, the Champ decided to take action and contacted BT who have now decided to offer her a goodwill gesture of 97 to refund the cost of the hourly rate.
The 99 hourly rate was reduced to 97 following the recent reduction in VAT rates so Mrs Catterall was refunded the full amount.
However, Mrs Catterall said she wants to warn other customers of the cost involved in calling out an engineer.
She said: "I am still annoyed at having to pay the call out charge.
"At the most I thought that I would have been given a bill for 30 or 40."
A spokesman for BT said: "We have agreed to meet Mrs Catterall halfway as a goodwill gesture. Our main aim is to get the issue resolved.
"We have been through our records and believe the charges were explained to the customer and although we are satisfied we want to resolve the issue amicably."
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Weather for Chorley
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
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