Cut a vigin cable accidentally

[Eddielancasrer]

Hi wondered if anyone could help,  I work as a fencing contractor and have over 20 year experience but however it's the first time I have had to deal with virgin regards a  cut cable . Yesterday I was on a job and a fence hole was needed to be dug in the front of a customers garden . Soon into the dig it became apparent I had cut through a brown coloured virgin cable which was about 100mm deep . I notified the customer and asked her check her services was still available but unfortunately wasn't.  I want to keep the inconvenience to a minimum to my customer so I contacted virgin straight away but the customer service team said they wouldn't speak to me as I wasn't the account  holder .I then had to ask my customer to make the call instead and they arranged for a engineer to come out the followling day . I today heard back from my customer that the cable was fix but virgin have charged her £100 . I have tried to call virgin a number of times today to question this charge and even was hung up on when I asked them to please hold while I got my customers address details .

My gripe is that this cable was not correctly installed as it was not in it normal protective green conduit and not clearly visible in the ground , in my opinion it was a accident waiting to happen,  I was trying to do the right thing with minimal fuss for my customer but now is going to cost me £100 for someones elses incompitance. Any thoughts much appreciated 

Eddie 

[Eddielancasrer]

Thanks for the replys,  a risk assessment is always done I had a map for services but virgin cables are not shown on these , the cable was brown , buried in the ground , looked like a root  , not worth claiming on insurance and why should I the fault lies with virgin for not installing the cable correctly in the first place , it was a accident waiting to happen imo

[-tony-]

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@Eddielancasrer wrote:

Thanks for the replys,  a risk assessment is always done I had a map for services but virgin cables are not shown on these , the cable was brown , buried in the ground , looked like a root  , not worth claiming on insurance and why should I the fault lies with virgin for not installing the cable correctly in the first place , it was a accident waiting to happen imo

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wait for some clarity from VM - i believe there should not be a charge - it may get complicated as you are not the account holder - the cable should have been in green trunking - that might have saved it i guess

you can point your customer here if and when you get confirmation the repair will be FOC - VM would want their details to remove the charge 

[spgray]

well whether the fault lies with your company or with virgin, i think we all agree the fault does not lie with your and virgins customers, so they should defintely not be out of pocket.

this is what you have liability insurance for, for when something your business does costs money to rectify.
no-one is saying it was broken on purpose, but liability insurance is there to cover for accidents.

personally i say the fault is 50/50 at best, yes the cable "could" have been buried deeper, but your company did put a spade thru it whilst carrying out paid work. i would also suggest that it is not for you to device whether a cable is installed "correctly" or not. the cable, i assume, was fine until you put a spade thru it.

100mm (10 cm) is a reasonable depth for a cable in someone's garden IMO.

[John_GS]

Hi @Eddielancasrer

Thanks for coming back to us. Could you get the person in question to post on the forums and we can deal with them directly as it's their account? If so, get them to link in or post on this thread and deal with me directly 🙂

Kind regards,