Hotelier slams BT service
A NORTH coast hotelier has accused British Telecom of poor service after waiting nearly a fortnight for a fault on his phone to be fixed.
Businessman Jimmy Young, of the Borgie Lodge Hotel near Bettyhill, estimates he lost over £1000 worth of business while the line was down.
He is now arguing with the utility over the level of compensation on offer. He said: "For a small business, in a small area, employing local people, BT has treated us very badly."
Mr Young, a former head chef in Orkney, took over the running of the eight-bedroomed hotel a year ago and has since rewired, replumbed and refurbished the property.
The hotel, which is now open all year round, supports eight members of staff.
"We’ve put a lot of effort and work into it and we are getting good feedback," said Mr Young.
The problems with the phones started on Friday, 26th July, following a lightning strike in the area.
"We ended up with no phone, no internet and no fax," said Mr Young, who cannot get a mobile phone signal in the vicinity of the hotel.
The fault was reported by a customer from Glasgow who had been trying to phone that day, as well as by Mr Young’s wife from their home phone, and later Mr Young himself.
He said: "BT said they couldn’t send an engineer out until Tuesday despite me arguing that I was running a business and needed it sorted right away. By the time Tuesday came around the internet had come back on but not the phone. There was no sign of an engineer that day so I checked my account online and was astounded to discover that BT had signed the job off as completed."
An irate Mr Young left the hotel and travelled to where he could get a mobile signal to ring BT again.
"I was put through to this call centre which turned out not even to be a BT call centre but a separate organisation which took calls about faults on behalf of BT," he said. "And to add insult to injury the cost of the call was £1.50 a minute!"
Mr Young wasn’t given an explanation as to why the promised engineer did not turn up that day, but was assured one would be along three days later on Saturday.
"Saturday came and went and no one turned up. I went online and it said again that the job had been completed," said Mr Young.
An engineer eventually turned up the following Tuesday, 6th August – 11 days after the fault had been reported.
"The customer care has been disastrous. I just felt as if my hands were tied and I couldn’t do anything about it," said Mr Young.
"It was disgusting the way we were treated. BT let me down not once but twice."
He has rejected BT’s offers of first £14 and then £215 compensation, plus six months’ free line rental.
"Our mailbox was full of customers trying to reach us and I estimate I’ve lost over £1000 worth of business. It’s simply not good enough and I’m holding out for more," he said.
A spokesman for BT said: "The severe lightning strikes experienced recently caused significant damage to telecoms services around Scotland.
"BT drafted in extra engineers to the worst hit areas in order to reach everyone affected as quickly as possible.
"Unfortunately lightning damage is notoriously difficult to repair. Engineers can clear one fault only to find others further along the line.
"Damage typically also takes time to manifest itself, so it can cause equipment to fail several days after the initial strike.
"In this case, a line divert was offered at the outset but was not pursued further by the Youngs. Unfortunately it looks like a delay then occurred as a result of a systems error with engineer bookings and we have raised this issue internally.
"Compensation schemes may be suspended where it is declared that an event such as an act of nature is beyond reasonable control, as was the case here.
"However, we will further discuss with Mr Young the settlement he is due under our terms and conditions.
"We’re sorry that it took longer than we would like to fix the damage caused by the lightning strike."