FFS how has this happened, paying twice for phone calls?

[saltire]

At the start of the year sometime DH decided we would switch over to Virgin for our phone calls, as we had them for broadband. I wasn't happy but it was his choice.
We got a letter from BT saying something along the lines of Sorry you are moving, if you decide to stay please contact us etc.
I can't find the letter

Had a call from BT saying they were looking to review our calling package, adn that we are on teh £14.45 a month package. I explained that we were with virgin. The man kept saying "for your calls, your line rental is BT".
He then said "well if that's the case you are paying twice". I explained aobut the letter and he said "BT don't cancel unless you tell us to, we just keep the packages running", and that it was our fault.
Now I have looked at the last statement, and there is no charge for any calls, all thetotals are at zero, but there is £36.89 calling plans charged from 1st August until 31st October. No mention of line rental, it doesn't feature on the statement at all, yet he kept going on about it.

Surely they would have cancelled when we switched over to Virgin?
or am I being thick? i can't find the letter they sent either

I think the calling plan means the line rental plus whatever free calls you get with that package.

If you were switching to Virgin for your calls then you would have needed to change your calling package with BT to the most basic one (£10.50 a month I think) in order to save the most money. Virgin wouldn't be able to do this for you, but perhaps should have advised you to do so.

Depends which package you went to with Virgin. If you went for the full waht they call LLU package (Local Loop Unbundling), then you will be paying Line Retnal and Calls (plus Broadband) to Virgin , ie they have taken over the line from BT.

If that was the package you went for, you shouldn't have had to do anything: the ltter you got from BT saying sorry you are leaving will also have said the date that the transfer was due to take place and will have said if you don't want it to happen, to give thme a call. SO if BT are still billing you, that is their mistake adn you should be due a refund.

Do you know the name of the package you went to with Virgin and/or how much you are paying per month?

yes, you continue to pay BT for the line rental even though you have moved your calls to virgin.

for instance i have my calls though AOL for £7.99 per month and all calls are free except premium and mobile etc. But i have to pay £10.50 (I think a month) to BT still.

so you should get a quarterly bill from bt detailing just the line rental.

It depends on whether yuo took a Virgin Phone Line as part of the bundle, in which case you should not also be paying for a phone line to BT or whther you just signed up for the "Carrier Pre-Select" option, in which case all your calls are routed over Virgin but you still have to pay BT for the line rental.

In both cases yuo would have got the "sorry you are leaving letter" - but in the latter case, if you were on a Call package with BT, then you should also have cancelled that.

I went through this, we paid BT anytime rates as well as to our actual provider, but as I had requested BT basic and knew I had, I called the contact centre and just kept asking for my request to be escalated, and voila, one supervisor later they refunded all my call charges.

Try it anyway, they're chancing their arm.

How much are you paying Virgin per month? From that. we'll be able to take a guess as to which package you are on.

you dont HAVE to pay virgin and BT

my dad (ie my old house) has used cable...

nynex / cable and wireless / NTL and now Virgin for years and years

he does NO pay BT a penny and hasnt in that whole time either... probably about 15 years now

It depends on the area though nannyL - we can't get a Virgin phone line as we don't have cables laid in our area.

You don't need to have cable. "Local Loop Unbundling" means that Virgin (and others) have put equipment into many BT exchanges which means that they then "rent" the "last mile" connection to your house on a wholesale basis. You then pay line rental direct to Virgin (or whoever) and don't have to pay a penny to BT.

It's all part of Ofcom's drive to increase competition in the telecoms sector.

I think BT have turned into(?) right shisters.

Am not happy with them at the moment after they miss-sold me an expensive package.

The customer service is awful too.

MascaraOHara. Presumably that also means you are stuff with thme for 12 months until you can get out of the contract.

18 months actually! but because they had this discount period and calculated/applied all the dicount in a complicated way.. Ididn't realise what they;d done until after the 14days cooling off period. tough luck for me

BT have people over a barrel to some degree and it pisses me off. Mind you Sky Customer Service is shite as well lol

Yes, we can get phone lines with other companies such as TalkTalk but we still can't get a Virgin phone line, which is a pity as we use them for our calls and internet and I've been quite pleased with them.

It just depends on whether Virgin has put the equipment into your local telephone exchange - obviously TalkTalk has. Virgin are still continuing to invest in their LLU - so you may find that one day you can get the full package including telephone line.