BT fails to connect with customer

By Will Davies

A YOUNG businesswoman claimed this week that BT’s failure to reconnect her telephone line following the storms of three weeks ago is crippling her business.

Joanna Lowe, who teaches cookery courses from her home in Stoke Row, said she is losing money every day. And to make matters worse, mobile ’phone reception is poor in the village, so she cannot be contacted until the line is restored.
Mrs. Lowe said: “BT has changed the date to come and repair the fault four times now. They said it would be fixed within two days but nothing happened, so I ’phoned again and the person I spoke to was so rude to me, he reacted to my frustration by putting the ’phone down.

“They have not been sympathetic at all. I am only a small business and cannot survive without a ’phone or the internet.

“Every time I want to make a call I have to go down the road, and even then the reception is bad.“ I can’t function at all. I’ve had no business for three weeks and probably lost at least £2,000. BT has got to provide me with some sort of compensation.”

This is not the first time Mrs. Lowe, who lives in Stoke Row, has been cut off.
She explained: “The last time this happened, BT did not reconnect the line for over two months.
“I find it so soul-destroying that I’m completely powerless to get this thing moving.

"That’s why I came to the Standard.

“I have paid my BT bill diligently and I find their attitude absolutely despicable. They call it customer care — I haven’t had any care.“BT has got to realise they are dealing with real people who need the phone to function. There’s no excuse for treating its loyal customers in such a cavalier fashion.”

A spokesman for BT has apologised for the delay and said that any substandard customer care could be put down to an “unprecedented busy period.”

BT press officer Emma Tennant said: “We have been very severely hit and obviously overhead cable work is notoriously time-consuming due to all the safety reasons. We are having to replace about 100 metres of overhead cable in the Stoke Row area.
“We think about ten customers are affected and have had engineers working round the clock. It isn’t normally what we would expect and we ask that customers bear with us.

“Keeping customers informed is something we try to do. It may well be that as we have been so busy it hasn’t been done to the normal high standards that we aspire to, and if that is the case I am very sorry — it isn’t typical.
“The repair is in hand and will be completed within the next few days. It is frustrating and all we can do is apologise.”