Faulty phone angers dad

BEN CURRAN

NO WAY TO CALL DAD: Grant Simeon is still waiting for Telecom to fix his phone connection after he had it installed so he could check on his sick six-year-old son, Sarntayne.

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Telecom spokeswoman Emma-Kate Greer said the situation is an unusual one and is being treated as a priority.

But it has been two days since Grant Simeon's landline phone connection cut out.

His son Sarntayne, 6, who suffers from asthma and was once admitted to hospitalised with bronchitis, developed it again a few weeks ago. That prompted Mr Simeon to get a landline installed.

He leaves his son with a babysitter when he goes to work at the freezing works at 5am each day.

"I need to be able to ring home and make sure my son is OK and ring the doctors. The babysitter is also pregnant and needs to be able to call for help if she goes into labour."

When the babysitter tried to ring Mr Simeon at work on Thursday to tell him Sarntayne was wheezing, the phone did not work.

She had no money on her cellphone to call.

When Mr Simeon, who also has no credit on his cellphone, returned from work that evening he had to go to a relative's place to use their phone to call Telecom.

"I rang them at 4pm and no-one answered for an hour, but by then I had to get back to my son who I had left with the neighbour."

He went back later in the evening and was again on hold for 90 minutes.

He called from work at 6.30am the next day and was told there was nothing that could be done immediately as there was a backlog, and that it was too early to call, and that he should call at 7am.

"They said it was probably a problem with my phone, not the phone lines."

After the Manawatu Standard became involved yesterday afternoon, Telecom rang and offered Mr Simeon $30 credit on his cellphone and to have all landline calls diverted to his cellphone. "It's all very well offering that to me now, but I needed that two days ago."

Telecom said someone would be out to look at the phone connection by 4pm today. Ms Greer said Telecom had no record of Mr Simeon's problem until yesterday afternoon.

His case had been escalated as a medical dependency, she said.

- © Fairfax NZ News