Vodafone customers affected by a fortnight-long signal outage should be allowed to seek service elsewhere, a local politician has said.
Gordon Banks, MP for Ochil and South Perthshire, has demanded that the company allow Auchterarder-based customers to cancel their contracts without penalty, after having their service cut off more than two weeks ago.
The outage has been caused after a landowner ordered the telecommunications giant to remove a mast on Rossie Hill.
Mr Banks has been in talks with the company after being contacted by a number of constituents. He is also calling for the company to compensate residents automatically for the loss of a “fundamental service”, rather than when they complain.
“Constituents who have been in contact with me at least now know the reason for the service failure, and that this has been caused by Vodafone and the landowner of their Dunning mast failing to reach agreement on a future agreement for the continued siting of a necessary mast,” said Mr Banks.
“However, I am very concerned that the company are hiding behind their contractual obligations, which go nowhere near meeting the expectations of their customers.
“The failure to supply continuity of signal is fairly and squarely down to the company and they should be willing to recognise their failings and shortcomings in this regard.
“I have urged them to proactively contact all their customers in the area to automatically offer them financial compensation.
“I have also asked for Vodafone to allow anyone who wishes to break their contract to do so without financial penalty.
“I also expect them to provide me with an indication of when services will resume.
“This has been a terrible example of customer relations and I have questioned why customers and elected representatives were not advised of this problem from the outset.
“This is simply not acceptable from a company of this size, providing what is, nowadays, a fundamental service.”
A Vodafone spokesman gave no indication that the company intended to allow customers to cancel their contracts.
He said: “We are aware that not all of our customers are affected to the same degree.
“If any customer is unable to use any of our services at all for three days or more in a row, we will arrange to reimburse that proportion of the line rental.”
He added: “We apologise to our customers in Auchterader and Callander who have been affected by the recent loss of service in some parts of the local area, which has been caused by the decommissioning of a local mast. This in turn has affected another mast that was linked to the rest of the network through the decommissioned site.
“The mast, located to the south of Dunning, was undergoing a lease renewal when the landlord made us aware of his plans to use the site as a windfarm.
“It became apparent that we were not going to be able to agree a new lease and we started the process of finding the two necessary replacement sites, which would have ensured a continuity of service for our customers. Towards the end of 2013, the landlord threatened us with court action to vacate the site and we agreed to decommission the site by the end of January 2014, in the belief that one of the replacement sites, which is now already built, would be active.
“Unfortunately, we have suffered a number of delays to bringing the mast live. We are working with our partners to ensure coverage is returned as soon as possible to the area.”