Owner of Eccleshill bike garage fears for business after being cut off (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Owner of Eccleshill bike garage fears for business after being cut off

8:30am Friday 20th January 2012 in News By Marc Meneaud

Barry Casson at Eccleshill Motorcycles

A Bradford motorbike garage owner fears for the future of his business after losing tens of thousands of pounds worth of trade while his phone and internet has been cut off for six weeks.

Barry Casson, who owns Eccleshill Motorcycles in Harrogate Road, has no working phone line nor broadband access after attempting to change providers on December 8.

He made an estimated £6,000 in a month since losing his phone and broadband – compared with taking £81,000 in January last year – and has been forced to lay off a worker. “It has had a devastating effect on my business,” said Mr Casson, 54, who has run the garage for 12 years. “Ofcom says I have to wait eight weeks before they will look into it.

“Eight weeks for a small business without communication would put some out of action – they will go bust. I am in a more fortunate position than most but if this goes on for another month, I will be bankrupt.”

His ordeal started when he decided to swap his home and business telephone line and broadband from TalkTalk Residential to rival Unicom. He later realised Unicom could not provide a fast enough internet connection and cancelled the contract but, by this time, his phone had been cut off.

A statement from TalkTalk said: “TalkTalk received notification that Mr Casson was moving his services to another provider, however, he later decided to stay with TalkTalk but unfortunately the new provider, Unicom, had already taken over part of his line. We are investigating his issue and are working with Unicom to get his TalkTalk line back up and running as soon as possible.”

Unicom was unavailable for comment.