THE manager of a business claims it has lost thousands of pounds because of BT’s poor service.
Paul Thomas, who runs Sleepland Beds at Deva Business Park, Sealand, says the firm has been without its main phone line for more than two months.
As well as an estimated £5,000-6,000 in lost sales, the company also shelled out about £3,000 on a ‘pointless’ advertising campaign.
Mr Thomas said: “We’ve got buses driving out with our adverts splashed all over them, but when people ring the number it says it’s out of service.”
And to add insult to injury, Sleepland was sent a bill of more than £1,500 for the string of engineers who have visited the premises to look into the problem.
But BT agreed to wipe out the bill after the company kicked up a stink.
Employee Andy Harrington said: “We’ve not been happy with the service at all – it’s been atrocious.”
Mr Thomas said the problems began earlier this year when Sleepland switched to BT from XLN.
“We swapped over on the proviso no numbers would be down, because we can’t afford to lose the business,” he said. “But that’s exactly what’s happened.
“They’ve said it will be fixed this week, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Mr Thomas said he is furious at the ‘pathetic’ service BT has provided.
He said the company ‘tried to blame XLN’ for the problems and he thinks it would have been a different story if a big business had similar trouble.
BT told Mr Thomas it will send him an information pack detailing how the company can claim compensation.
A spokesperson said it was an ‘unusual’ case.
She added: “While four out of the customer’s five lines were transferred to BT as planned, unfortunately we encountered a technical issue when converting one of their other numbers.
“As a result, the customer is discussing the issue of compensation with us.
“We apologise for any inconvenience caused as we sought to restore service to this line.”
