Frustrated residents of a Fife village have criticised communications giant BT for failing to fix a long-standing problem with their landlines.
Around 10 homeowners in St Michaels have had no phone or internet in their homes since November 22, despite workmen from Openreach, a division of BT, being sent out to try to repair the fault on numerous occasions,
When contacted by The Courier, BT apologised to the customers affected, who all live in a rural area near St Michaels Inn, but said it could not provide a definite date by when full repairs would be carried out.
A spokeswoman said engineers had hoped to fix the problem once and for all last week but went on to discover a series of further faults on the cable route.
“Another 350 metres of cable needs to be replaced but, given the scale of the issues uncovered to date, they have taken the decision to replace the entire remaining 800 metres of cable on the route,” she said.
“This is to ensure these type of problems do not arise again in the future. Planners are now working on the plans and logistics required to allow this work to go ahead.
“They are aware of the lengthy delays in this case and we’ll do all we can to restore full services to those affected as quickly as possible.
“We would again like to apologise to everyone affected by this break in service and reiterate that service providers can help by putting line diverts in place for example, to mobile phones to minimise the inconvenience.
One of the residents affected, Jim Sneddon, said he was “very disappointed” with BT’s response.
“Up until now they have given us one excuse after the other, resulting in unfulfilled promises.
“For a communications company, their performance leaves a lot to be desired and I find it very difficult to believe anything they say.
“We are talking about a firm which made a pre-tax profit of £617 million in the last three months of 2013 their customer service is appalling.
“Since BT are now going to the expense of replacing 800 metres of cable, would it not make more sense to improve the technology at the same time and invest in the Super Broadband that they promote in their advertising?
“Unfortunately, in this area there are no alternative providers so they have no competition.”