A Shannochie couple were left without a phone for more than five weeks despite specialist engineers being on Arran last week.
BT engineers travelled to Kilmory last Thursday to repair a severed phone line that left 35 residents without a phone for a week but they still did not fix the line at Shannochie despite repeated complaints to BT.
Brian Couper and his wife Irene said they informed BT of a fault on their line in early November.
Brian said: ‘We reported a noisy line and intermittent fault on the phone which caused telephone calls to be terminated abruptly on November 5.
‘Engineers duly attended the following day and identified the possible cause as overhead cable damage where the line ran through the garden of the old Shannochie post office.
‘By that evening the line was dead and it took five weeks to be repaired.’
As reported in last week’s Banner, like the customers in Kilmory, BT told the Coupers a specialist engineering team from the mainland was needed to fix the cable.
To speed up matters the Coupers contacted local MSP Kenneth Gibson.
Mr Gibson said: ‘I contacted BT who advised that a survey team would call on December 6 to survey, not fix, the major overhead cable repair identified.’
Repairs were eventually carried out on Monday of this week.
The MSP asked BT to check all call-boxes on Arran were in working condition as there were reports that at least two did not work.
In trying to contact BT for updates, Mr Couper found that the phone box at Shannochie post office was not working.
The MSP explained: ‘BT has advised that it is up to customers to report broken payphones. When reporting them the public are expected to give the exact details of the problem.
‘Frankly, I think there is an element of complacency here from BT, putting the onus on the customers.
‘Surely in this day and age they could electronically check their own booths regularly to ensure they are working?’
A BT spokesman told The Banner this week: ‘There were delays to this repair because we had to arrange tree cutting and subsequently bring over an aerial team from the mainland, so the work took much longer than we hoped and we’d like to apologise to Mr Couper for the inconvenience he has suffered.
‘We have plans in place to train two of our four engineers on Arran in aerial work, and three of the engineers have been equipped with larger vehicles so that they can carry our more complex repair and maintenance work.’
