A TAXI boss claims he nearly lost his livelihood after a communications mix-up left him without his business telephone line.

Jim Crowe, who owns Horndale Taxis in Newton Aycliffe, said he has lost hundreds of pounds after there was a delay in switching his telephone line over to a new address in the town.

Yesterday, BT admitted that human error meant that the 31-year-old's line was not switched on until yesterday morning despite promises that it would be up and running by the end of last week.

The company was asked by Manchester-based telecommunications service provider Unicom to connect the line, but the error meant that Mr Crowe was left without his main line throughout the weekend.

A BT spokesperson said: "This is not our normal standard of service. We have made a mistake and that mistake was down to human error.

"We will be happy to talk about compensation with Unicom should they wish to contact us. The service is now working."

Mr Crowe, who is a Unicom customer, said that he is furious with the way the situation was handled.

He said: "All I want is to be compensated for loss of earnings. It is not just my customers I have to consider, it's the drivers and they need to be paid.

"The line is working now but I was beginning to worry about the long-term future."

Mr Crowe said that he has been unhappy with the service by Unicom who he says failed to tell him that it would take two weeks to connect his line from the date he informed them of his move.

He said: "If they had told me I could have made alternative arrangements."

A spokesperson for Unicom said that the company's operators had informed Mr Crowe of the two-week transfer period but had tried their best to get him connected before that period was up.

He said: "The customer did not give us sufficient notice of moving, which meant that his line wasn't switched over on the day that he moved, but the latest delay was down to BT. We have got 35,000 live business customers and this is the first time that BT engineers have let us down in this way."