Chocolate Velvet staff cars prevent the Chorus van from leaving on Thursday April 14 after a week without a phone connection.

A Nelson couple left without a phone connection for more than a week after getting fibre installed say it has cost their business thousands of dollars.

The couple were so frustrated at the lack of action after a week without a phone they boxed in a Chorus vehicle for five hours, demanding technicians reconnect the line.

Cake company Chocolate Velvet owners Phil and Leanne Lash said their main issue was with the lack of communication from their landline provider Spark.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/FAIRFAX NZ Chocolate Velvet owner operator Phil Lash is battling Spark and Chorus to fix his company's landline which has been out of action for over a week.

They had no answer from Spark about why their phone was not working during the eight days without it.



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"I think it would have been one of the most stressful experiences I have been through in my 10 years of being in business," Leanne said.

About 70 per cent of their business came via their landline with people calling up to place orders.

The disruption cost them several thousand dollars worth of business. Cake sales were down during their time without a landline - a direct result of customers not being able to reach them, Phil said.

It is not the first time trouble with phone and internet connections after fibre installation have made the headlines. In February, a Geraldine man spent more than two months waiting for his landline and broadband to be connected.

After spending almost two weeks without internet or phone in November, a Hamilton man advertised for Spark therapy in a local paper.

Fibre was installed at Chocolate Velvet on April 7 and the following day, they realised that somewhere in the process their landline had stopped working.

The first Leanne knew of the issue was when a customer came into the shop and said they had left a message about collecting a cake. She wondered why she had not heard the phone ring.

They spent several hours on the phone trying to get through to Spark over the week to resolve the issue without success.

A call diversion was put in place so calls were diverted to the couple's cellphones but that only worked for two days and they could not get hold of anyone at Spark to reinstate it.

Chorus said the landline not working was the service provider Spark's problem. Spark said it was a Chorus problem as it had occurred after the fibre installation.

"It feels like there is no-one to contact. Who does anyone contact if there is an issue with their phone line? I'm sure we are not the only ones who have been through this," Leanne said.

A Chorus employee who came out on April 9 said that the fibre hadn't been installed correctly and technicians would need to return to fix it.

When they returned on April 14, after a week without the their landline, Phil said he was at the end of his tether.

He told them they were not leaving until their phone was reconnected.

"We gave them cups of coffee and pieces of cake to eat, they were quite happy," Leanne said.

The technicians spent two and a half hours on hold with Spark before Phil got a call at 7.30pm from their manager asking if they could go home.

Leanne said the biggest problem was that Chorus appeared to have no direct contact with Spark and had to use the same channels to contact them that anyone else would.

"I think that Chorus really did a good job trying to help us, but Spark is our provider and they did nothing for us," she said.

The landline was reconnected late the next day on April 15.

"From our point of view, why can't the provider ring the customer with a solution, or an answer or a timeframe of when it is going to be fixed?"

The couple, who have been with Telecom, then Spark since their they started their business 12 years ago and after the experience are considering changing providers.

Chorus media and PR manager Nathan Beaumont said when a customer requested fibre installation, the internet service provider would contact Chorus to place an order on their behalf.

He said Chorus connected ultra fast broadband at Chocolate Velvet on April 7 and they were informed by Spark they would manage the set up of the phone service. As the phone service was provided by Spark, they were the point of contact if there was an outage.

A spokeswoman for Spark said as part of the fibre installation for Chocolate Velvet, the landline was moved to the voice-over-fibre service but there was some difficulty getting it to work.

"We're extremely sorry for the poor experience Phil and Leanne have had and for the time it's taken Spark to resolve this issue," she said.

"We know it's incredibly frustrating for customers when they're trying to run a business and so we're currently reviewing our processes to get to the root cause of the issue and to understand why it took so long to fix it."

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