Leicester takeaway claims to have lost thousands of pounds after phone disconnected in 'routine upgrade'

The owner of a Leicester pizza takeaway has claimed to have lost thousands of pounds in business after a routine phone upgrade went wrong. Bansri Visram, 40, the owner of BJ’s Pizza, in Melton Road, Rushey Mead, claimed she was told when her landline was disconnected by a BT engineer that her new digital phone system would be up and running within 24 hours.

However, neither worked for more than a week, leaving her customers unable to reach the takeaway through the normal number, she claimed. Bansri said the situation had "devastated" her income as most of her regular business came from telephone orders. As a result of little business coming in, she claimed, she had to close the business, throw away days' worth of stock and was unable to pay her staff.

Bansri said her business had had the same number for 30 years. BT has apologised for the "disruption" and said it was “investigating the root cause of the problem”.

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Bansri said: “It's next to impossible to survive without my landline. Ninety nine per cent of my business is from the land line.

“I was at home doing nothing. I’m a single parent, how am I going to pay my bills? They are destroying lives here.

"I was calling BT every day since, and spending three or four hours telling them and all they did was send me from one department to another."

She said that when people tried to call her business, the number was coming up as "not recognised". She claimed that BT said her number would not be fixed until tomorrow (Friday, May 3), 10 days after her phones went offline. After being contacted by LeicestershireLive, however, BT had Bansri’s phone working again on Tuesday (April 30).

“I was told it was going to be sorted in 24 hours every time I rang, it is just the script from India in the call centres," said Bansri. "I did not get any help from anyone. Imagine the stress of a [running a] business [which is] just being told false promises by BT. It is going to take me months to get back to normal because of their mistake.”

Bansri said she believed her number should have been transferred to the company’s online portal, the BT Cloud Voice Express, before her landline was disconnected on Tuesday, April 23,

Bansri said. “How many people have BJ’s Pizza on their phone? Now, customers can contact us through UberEats and Deliveroo, but that is paying [just] 25 per cent of what my bills are.

“I got three or four orders from UberEats and Deliveroo yesterday and on average with the landline I’ll get 10 to 15 calls a day during the week. On a weekend, I’ll get between 35 and 50 on average."

Bansri said she would be pursuing compensation as a result of what has happened. She added that she was “relieved” that the phone line was back up and running. “[After] sleepless nights, my stress went through the roof," she said. "I feel relieved. As a single parent this isn’t easy. The staff are relying on our earnings. The interruption of my business for a week - it's shocking."

She added: “My concern is there are thousands of businesses in the UK who may go through the pressures and stress of BT not having done their job properly.”

BT told LeicestershireLive: “We are very sorry for the issues Ms Visram has experienced with her phoneline. We have apologised for the disruption caused and are investigating the root cause of the problem.”

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