BUSINESSES in Tavistock were this week calling for action after problems with their telephone lines have gone unrepaired — some for nearly a month.

Many of the telephone lines in the Brook Street, Duke Street, Market Street and Dolvin Road area have been affected, which has hit both business and residents' homes, many reporting dead phones or severe interference.

Worse was to come on Tuesday morning, when businesses also found themselves without vital internet and broadband access.

Tavistock businessman John Baldwin is not impressed with the lack of action by BT or Openreach.

He owns two jewellery shops in Duke Street, John Balwin's at number 11 and John James at number 15 — both had interference on the line and dialling problems. Three Sundays ago he reported a fault on the line at the John James shop and an engineer came to repair it but could not do the work at his other shop because he did not have a necessary 'docket number'.

The next day the phone line at John Baldwin's went dead completely.

Mr Baldwin said: 'We reported the fault and BT told us that in order to do the necessary repairs they would have to dig up the road and close it to traffic and they needed to get planning permission to do this and expected repairs to be done by March 5 and when it didn't happen they then said March 12.'

Mr Baldwin is not too happy either that BT have offered no compensation to him or other traders and individuals affected by the faulty lines.

'We are a thriving business but since our telephones have been down we reckon that we are 30 per cent down, as a lot of our business is jewellery repairs and people phone us.

'BT have been stonewalling us, there just seems no urgency to them. It seems to me that because they are installing their superfast, optic fibre broadband lines they do not want to bother with the cost of repairing the old lines.'

Towls of Tavistock in Brook Street have also had their phone lines down.

They also contacted BT three weeks ago but the problem has still not been fixed. Even before that the phones were 'crackling'.

Adrian Towl said: 'It is creating a lot of hassle. I've been able to connect through a computer line through a card reader and had to get BT to divert calls on to that line.

'It's been a pain when you have to answer the phone and somebody is on the computer.

'BT keep on telling me it is going to be fixed at the end of the week but that is now and it still hasn't happened.'

Judith Murray, owner of Farley Menswear in Brook Street, also reported severe crackling on her line on February 26 which still has not been repaired.

She depends on the phone line for payments via credit and debit cards and it means her customers have to pay through cash or cheques — causing great inconvenience.

She said: 'It's been a real handicap trying to take orders over the phone or talking to people about whether their alterations are ready and all you hear is crackling and distortion. I now have to do my administration on the computer at home and for ordering but the warehouses I order from shut at 5pm.

'My big concern is that people think my business is not functioning because the line is dead.'

She has contacted BT on numerous occasions and said their response was 'just not good enough'.

'BT still can't tell us when the work will be done. BT say there will be no compensation from them as it's an Openreach problem and they say because it was caused by weather conditions it was an "Act of God" — so what they are saying is no one is liable!'

'BT call themselves a service. Well if they are not providing a service, to me they are not fit for purpose!'

Next door at Purple Penguins, the jewellery and craft shop, manageress Judy Ward said for the past two or three weeks said she has had to use a mobile phone to call back customers and it was costing a fortune.

The loss of the internet has caused big problems for businesses, including the Times.

Jim Griffiths, group internet manager for Tindle Newspapers said the situation had been a bit of a 'nightmare' in producing this week's papers.

'As a company we now have no internet connectivity and cannot function as normal or sending our newspaper pages to press. We have had to use new hardware and routers to do the job, which is expensive.'

One of his colleagues contacted BT and was told 'due to the upgrading of the fibre optic cabling in the area there would be some expected downtime'.

However, when Mr Griffiths talked to another BT operative, he told him a cable under the road had been cut through which had exposed random telephone numbers. He added that the council had allowed the road to be dug up, but not before March 21, when they will inspect the cable. However this would only be an inspection before any works began.

BT apologises for the delay in restoring service and say 37 customers have reported a fault.

Jason Mann, a spokesman for BT, said: 'It is a complex repair which includes the replacement of 200 metres of underground cable and use of specialised equipment and temporary traffic lights. The work is due to take place at night from March 17.

'Overall, the network in the South West has held up well in the recent exceptional bad weather and we have no major "outages", but we do have faults affecting individual customers or relatively small numbers of customers.

'Of course, each of these individual faults needs to be repaired and we are doing all we can to restore services as quickly as possible.

'We have been working through weekends and brought in engineers from other areas to help out. Many faults are cleared quickly, but some are more complex and take longer.'

When it came to compensation for the interruptions, BT said that the customer would need to discuss any such claims with their service provider (the organisation with whom they have a contract).

Mr Mann added: 'BT's local network business, Openreach, has declared the recent exceptional bad weather in this area as a "matter beyond our reasonable control". This is likely to affect the handling by service providers of any claims for compensation.'

When asked about the loss of internet connections to some of its Tavistock customers Mr Mann assured the Times that the engineering works were booked in for three nights from March 17 and specialist equipment was needed. The repairs to the cable are to be carried out at the junction of Whitchurch Road and Deep Park Lane.

Mr Mann said:?'We certainly apologise for any delays and advise people to get in touch with their service provider who will be kept informed of works undertaken by Openreach.'

• The Times thanks Karen's Restaurant for its assistance while its internet connections are affected.