Bosses at a takeaway say they lost more than £2,000 worth of orders when BT accidentally cut off the telephone lines for almost two weeks.

March Kebab and Pizza, in Station Road, lost its telephone ordering service when a new tenant moved into a flat behind the shop and asked for a BT line.

Tracey Akcan said: “We are 10a Station Road and the flat is 10. A new tenant ordered a new service and they put it through as number 10.

“Apparently though BT has us on its system as number 10, even though on our phone bills it says 10a.

“It meant our lines were stopped.”

The takeaway first realised its two lines were dead on August 28. The shop rang BT, said Mrs Akcan, which promised to fix it within hours.

By Friday, however, the number was still not working and so BT diverted one of the lines to a mobile number. The remaining landline remained dead.

The problem was eventually resolved on Tuesday last week.

Ms Akcan said: “Business was 50 per cent down. It’s been terrible. We had to send one driver home and kept one member of staff off.

“At one point we were offered a new number — that was no good at all as it would cost us a fortune re-printing leaflets and potentially losing a lot of customers who had our old number.

“We have been offered £300 compensation but in two weekends we lost much more money than that. We had one number to take orders but as everyone knows, the weekend is our busiest time and one phone line was not enough.

“We want to apologise to customers who experienced problems. The telephone lines are now back to normal service.”

A BT spokesman said: “We are sorry for the problems on this account. We will fully investigate and be in contact with the customer to discuss fully.”