Family waited four months to have phone connected

Jennifer Whichello, her husband and children aged four and one at last had their landline phone switched on last Friday.

They placed an order around August 16 for the telephone line to start on August 25 when they moved into their Hook Lane home from Middleton.

They thought transferring the existing landline from the previous owner to their name would be easy.

But it turned into a long-running saga and a catalague of confusion and mishaps. She has never been given an explanation for the problems.

Mrs Whichello (38) had to make numerous phone calls to BT '“ either on a mobile or using the nearest telephone box a seven minute walk away '“ to try to resolve the situation. The longest of these calls lasted an hour and 42 minutes.

At one stage, a BT engineer who made it to her home had to hang up after waiting for 45 minutes for an answer to his query about the situation.

Amid the confusion and delays, Mrs Whichello had to cope with her father-in-law's death without being able to use a landline to make a stressful situation worse. She was his registered career and the family moved into the property together in August.

But he passed away at the age of 76 on the night of November 16.

Mrs Whichello said: "I came downstairs to find him collapsed on the kitchen floor.

"I dashed to my mobile to call an ambulance and managed to state my name.

"The signal failed. Extremely distressed, a managed to find my father-in-law's telephone and duly, on a different network, managed to re-establish connection.

"The ambulance arrived but it was too late because my father-in-law had passed away.

"I am utterly exhausted and furious at BT, during a very stressful and upsetting time of my life.

"Despite having explained on the telephone to BT staff, that a landline is essential to my daily life, it seemed that the company did not care.

"Nobody has been in touch about the phone working.

"I just picked it up and it was all right. The whole situation has been disgraceful. The way we have been treated is not right."

BT was not available to comment.