A FURIOUS taxi boss in Ipswich is today seeking compensation from BT after faulty phone lines almost crippled his business.Richard Bosanquet, general manager of First Class Cars, says he lost nearly all his income after his phones went down on last Wednesday.

A FURIOUS taxi boss in Ipswich is today seeking compensation from BT after faulty phone lines almost crippled his business.

Richard Bosanquet, general manager of First Class Cars, says he lost nearly all his income after his phones went down on last Wednesday.

The Upper Orwell Street Company, which opened in December, relies heavily on business from customers calling by telephone.

Mr Bosanquet said: “Everybody thinks the company has gone down. It has cost me a lot of money because all I had was walk-in trade. Around 90-95 per cent of my business went overnight.”

Mr Bosanquet said the problems occurred after the telecoms company installed £2,500 worth of new telephone equipment at the taxi rank on Monday, April 14.

In the early hours of the following Wednesday, the phone lines went down and had not been restored by until Friday afternoon.

He said the fault re-occurred on Saturday before the company was re-connected again over the weekend.

Mr Bosanquet added: “BT was unable to redirect our phone lines. They said they were working on fixing the problem, but it didn't help. It was crippling us.

“It has done a lot of damage to us. I blame BT because I think it should have been fixed a lot quicker.

“We are going to put the case in the hands of our solicitors. In the meantime, I want to get it across to people that we are still here.”

Paul Hayward, a spokesman for BT, said: “There was a problem at the exchange causing the fault for this customer. Because of the nature of the fault it had not been possible to offer diverts of calls to other numbers.

“Clearly we would wish to apologise for the delays in clearing this fault, we did absolutely all we could to get this cleared as quickly as is possible.”