| Firm has its Big day ruined by BT error |
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The owner of a Shropshire company is fuming after a foul-up from British Telecom shut-down his entire communications - on the day the firm's £6,000 new website went live. Architect Vic Johnson, of Johnson Design Partnership in Bridgnorth, lost both the phone and internet connections after BT cut him off a month before they were supposed to. It took a week before they could be reconnected. Vic is moving to state-of-the-art offices next to the Severn Valley Railway and had contacted BT to install new lines and transfer the existing numbers across at the end of May. BT today blamed an "administrative error" for the problem. Vic explained: "It has taken us months of planning to set up the new website and were counting down the days to when it finally went live. "We had a phone call from the web developers on Thursday evening to say it would go live the next day but after that everything went dead. "For the next week I spent all my time on the phone trying to sort it out. BT realised it had made a mistake but it seemed impossible to reconnect us quickly. We were left for a week without phone and internet and had to trail cables through to a company next door to be able to access emails." As a last resort, Vic even contacted the company's chairman, Sir Mike Rake, to see if he could do anything about it. "It was a long shot," Vic admitted, "but I was so angry and I wanted something to be done immediately. Every business relies entirely on its phone and internet connections and we were no different. "In fairness to Sir Mike he sent us a personal reply saying he would get onto it and a few days later we were back up and running. But as yet we've had no apology." A spokeswoman for BT said: "Firstly I would stress everything is now working as it should. "It appears an admin error occurred, stemming from the customer's order surrounding their proposed office move. "Basically I believe the request was received and the old service was stopped too early. Following this, there are certain processes we have to go through to get it back on again, hence the delay in restoring services. "The BT chairman's office has been dealing with his enquiry personally, and will ensure the communications part of their office move goes to plan ¬ at the correct time. "In the meantime, we apologise for the inconvenience caused." |