A Borders hotelier left without broadband for 12 days has been astounded by BT’s speedy response after an email reached the very top.
Steve and Lisa Davies, who run Caddon View in Innerleithen, believe they have lost £3,000 worth of bookings while offline.
Their phone and broadband went off on February 25, and the broadband was still off 12 days later.
Having immediately taken the matter up with BT to no avail, apart from their phone being reconnected after four days, Mr Davies spoke to community councillor Brian McCrow, who was involved with the successful BT Race to Infinity bid.
Mr McCrow then sent an email to Brendon Dick, director of BT Scotland.
Mr Davies said: “Twenty minutes later I was contacted by BT asking: ‘Who do you know, because I’ve now been told to speak to anyone I need to to fix the problem’.
“Even more amazing was the fact that nine hours later the service was restored. Clearly it was mendable within 10 hours, if someone could be bothered.”
In response to the issues, BT offered three months’ free broadband. “It is not really acceptable,” said Mr Davies. “We lost a lot of time, money and effort on this.”
After reluctantly accepting the offer, Mr Davies said they then received a letter saying they had declined the offer and would be cut off if they didn’t pay their bills.
“We had been quite reasonable with them, and never threatened to not pay them, so this seemed a bit rich,” said Mr Davies.
BT told TheSouthern the problem had been caused by a fault linked to high demand and that engineers were initially unable to transfer Mr Davies’ connection to a working port at the local street cabinet as all others were in use.
The equipment needed to increase capacity was ordered, which could take up to four weeks, before finding and repairing a faulty port and switching over Mr Davies’ service.
A BT spokesman added: “We’ve apologised for this break in service and as a goodwill gesture we offered Mr Davies three months broadband rental. He declined this offer and said he was going to consult a solicitor.
“As a result he was sent a deadlock letter, which warns customers that they must pay any outstanding balances within 14 days and if they don’t, their service could be disconnected.
“We also told Mr Davis that as we have reached deadlock he can take his complaint to the communications ombudsman.”