BT says sorry for company's 'nightmare' after phone and internet lines are cut off
BT has apologised to a business that was left thousands of pounds out of pocket after having its phone lines and internet cut off.
The Repton Group, which specialises in training and security, described the disruption it had suffered as "devastating".
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Samantha Repton says the disruption caused to The Repton Group has been 'devastating'.
The saga began last month when the company was planning to change offices within the Derwent Business Centre, in Clarke Street, Derby, where it is based.
A senior business consultant at BT Local Business said it needed up to seven weeks to make the necessary phone and internet line changes, so the move, scheduled for February 1, had to be postponed.
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Subsequently, an employee of BT Business Movers contacted The Repton Group to say that a date for the switch had indeed been set for January 31.
Samantha Repton, director of The Repton Group, asked to have the date deferred to March 1 but phone lines were still cut off at the end of January and the broadband service stopped on February 4.
Ms Repton said: "It has been impossible to run my business properly and the level of disruption has been devastating. It has been hugely frustrating being constantly shunted from pillar to post without anyone from BT being able to help.
"For six days I have been paying wages to my employees who have not been able to work properly and have been using their own internet service provider to try to keep things going. Without broadband, I couldn't check bank accounts online, set up payments or organise tax and National Insurance payments online. We are totally dependent on e-mail and phone lines to conduct business and this experience has been an absolute nightmare."
During the firm's internet blackout, it was unable to carry out investigations and background checks and was unable to book training courses.
The disruption is understood to have cost the company more than £2,000.
A spokesman for BT said: "We are sorry for the problems encountered with the loss of some services related to the customer's forthcoming move. We have been doing all we can to get this all working correctly as quickly as possible once the problem occurred. The two affected numbers were restored on February 1 and the broadband was restored on Thursday. We have been in contact with the customer to apologise directly and fully discuss the matter."
2 Comments
by Southcliffe
Wednesday, February 20 2013, 1:54PM
“The BT spokesman's wording seems unfortunate: "We are sorry for the problems encountered with the loss of some services related to the customer's forthcoming move."
Why does the sentence include the word "some"? It sounded pretty catastrophic to me!
And reference to "the customer's forthcoming move" - surely that's not intended to make it sound as if the problem was the customer's fault because the customer chose to change something?
Or am I being unfair here? Perhaps the wording was 'accidental'? What do you think?”
by coralsea
Wednesday, February 13 2013, 3:09PM
“BT should be made to refund this company fully with Imediate effect, businessess are struggling enough financaily as it is without this happening, this was not the fault of the Repton group and BT should act accordingly and admit there error”