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Line failure costs garage £30k
4:43pm Tuesday 1st April 2008
A family is furious with British Telecom after their business was forced shut for the first time in 87 years when the phone line went down.
Bellinger's Service Station in Station Road, Grove, lost an estimated £30,000 over the Easter weekend because bank and credit cards could not be swiped.
It was the first time the business had been forced to close since it was established in 1921, keeping going even through the petrol rationing of the Second World War.
BT apologised - and offered the company £5.60, the equivalent of two days' line rental, in compensation.
Manager Mike Bellinger was forced shut on two of the busiest days of the year over Easter.
He said: "What Hitler could not make them do all through the war, BT has managed in less than a week.
"I feel incredibly frustrated. Everyone was very polite on the phone, but no one could do anything. It's just faceless unaccountability.
"Our whole business is dependent on them and there is nothing I can do.
"BT asked us to update our business line to a faster line.
"This was ordered in December and double-checked in February to be installed on Tuesday, March 18, with a maximum of one hour disruption.
"A week later we still had no line.
"Without the telephone we could not send any credit card information to Texaco and all the memory in the electronic till was full."
A spokesman for BT apologised and said the line had been restored on Tuesday, March 25.
She added: "There was a break in his service which was much longer than it should have been and this was exacerbated by the Easter Bank Holiday."
Your Say YourOxford
martin, Cumnor says...
5:41pm Tue 1 Apr 08
Re nationalise with no profits for the shareholders so at least we had some control over their awful service. BT are dreadful to deal with - you just can't get hold of anyone who will actually sort something out. Same with Thames Water over a leaking pipe I had and same with Southern Electric - 4 months to get a man out to give me a quote on rehanging a line! And I had no option but to use these dreadful compnaies because they operate a total monopoly where there's no competition. The biggest losers are the UK taxpayers in all this privatisation malarky!
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Daniel, Oxford says...
5:02pm Tue 1 Apr 08
I didn't get any compensation. But they did try to charge me £99 for line installation, when there had actually been one there all along.