BT pull plug onRye’s new kinocinema centre

The telecoms company disconnected the cinema after wrongly believing a bill had not been paid.

It left the cinema unable to take online bookings and affected tills.

Kino Director Matt Breckon said: “This is not the start we wanted. You could not have made this up.

“We paid our bill back in October and yet they disconnected us without any warning or communication and then were unable to reconnect us.

“They terminated our broadband two days before opening.

“Everyone from the managing director of BT down has been involved in trying to sort this out. It was working fine before they terminated it.

“Luckily a supporter of the cinema offered us the use of a 3G internet dongle which enabled us to operate one of the three tills.

“We have been limping along and our customer service levels, including phone answering, have been severely impacted.

“We are unable to accept credit card payments, and all our internal IT infrastructure has been affected.

“We have been doing our best in extremely challenging circumstances but I think people need to know that we’ve been doing everything to get the problem resolved, and that this is not how we intended our first week to be.

“BT has promised every day for the last 12 days to resolve the issue, and at the end of each day, the problem has not be solved, and no temporary solution arranged.”

An engineer spent most of Monday at the Lion Street cinema attempting to resolve the problem.

Mr Breckon added: “It is only the hard work and dedication of our staff that has got us through.

“I am concerned that something that snowballed into a catastrophe has affected our reputation and image.”

Despite the problems the cinema has received much praise since opening.