A HARBOURMASTER and boat trip operator says he is furious with a phone company after a signal outage cost his business hundreds of pounds.

Ollie Puckey is one of four skippers who operate as Polperro Bay Coastal Trips, taking visitors to see the local marine life and sights and along the coast to Fowey. But he said that yesterday, EE’s service was down for the whole day in the village – and the problem continued this morning.

With most of his customers needing to pay by card, and the card reader unable to function without the phone signal, Ollie ended up having to turn people away.

’EE is the main provider for Polperrro and nearly every business relies on it,’ he said.

’Our trips to Fowey are one of our best earners. They are £30 a head, and people don’t usually carry that kind of cash around in their pockets any more. Between the four boats we must have lost about £800 yesterday.’

Also affected was Jasmine Cave, who sells art, jewellery and gifts at her shop Jasmine Rebecca Art on Fore Street.

’I lost several customers yesterday, and this morning,’ she said.

’It’s very frustrating, especially since we are all trying to encourage contactless card payments to minimise cash handling.

’I have offered a few customers free postage if they shop via my website, but I will have to wait and see if they remember, as often sales are impulsive.’

In the Three Pilchards pub, assistant manager Josh Jones said that luckily the pub has a different system for its tills, but that the service outage had caused other problems.

’It affected our waiting list service,’ he said.

’We don’t take bookings, but when we are busy we take people’s numbers and ring them when a table becomes free. So we haven’t been able to call people back – it’s been a nightmare, and it’s affected our trade.’

Harbourmaster Ollie added: ’If it was a one-off I could understand it. But it’s not as if it’s the first time it’s happened. The summer before last it was down for about a week. All they offered us then was a couple of weeks off our bill.

’This time they haven’t even apologised, just given us the standard response.’

People in Polperro were reporting that the signal had been restored this afternoon – but a message on the EE website still said that there are service problems in the village.

The Cornish Times has contacted EE to ask what was behind the problems and whether businesses will be recompensed.