Julian Ware, of Edwards Close, Thurlestone, writes

In your edition of August 14, you reported that residents of Thurlestone had been left without phone or broadband since July 21, due to a broken cable. 

Sadly, according to BT, it has still been unable to reconnect up to 16 houses in the village, including our own home.

BT seems incapable of solving the problem. So far, we have been given five dates by which we were promised that the problem would be rectified. 

All have passed, without it being resolved. 

Each time you contact BT for an update, you are forced to call an 0800 number for which you are charged at premium rates as the only way we have to call is via a mobile phone.

Each call gets answered by an automated message and sometimes it takes as long as 45 minutes to get through to anyone. 

I estimate that I have so far spent over 200 minutes waiting to get through. Multiply that by 16 frustrated residents and that is a lot of revenue generated for BT, just so as to report the same fault that they created in the first place.

In my frustration, I recently asked for a number I could ring at BT to complain about the lack of service we were receiving, only to be told that the operator was not allowed to give this number out!   

Three weeks on and I have just spoken to BT again. This time, I was asked what I wanted them to do about the problem. 

I would have thought that after so long this would have been self-evident – fix it!

I understand that BT have the contract to connect the South Hams to the superfast broadband highway. If so, based on my recent experience, we are all lost!