MOBILE phone customers around Chipping Campden have been left frustrated after having little or no EE signal for six weeks and feel they are being fobbed off with lame excuses.

Ron Dennett said he is continuing to ring the company every 48 hours to remind them he still has no signal.

He first got in touch with them on May 21 and after several calls, for which he eventually was given a workable freephone number, he cancelled the contract and moved to BT.

"Looking on the internet, BT coverage appeared sufficient. I signed up on June 2 only to discover that BT is in the process of buying out EE (itself a merger of Orange and T-Mobile) and in the meantime was piggy-backing the same mast so I don't have a signal for that either."

Mr Dennett said that BT is using EE engineers and all inquiries and complaints have to go through EE so he is back where he started and continuing to pursue answers.

"I do feel they are fobbing us all off. If it's a problem with the mast why can't they fix it? Some days I can get a weak signal from the garden but most times there is nothing."

I would encourage people to complain and use the freephone number 0800 079 0275. The first time I rang from my landline I was charged between £10 and £15 for the call. It is free from the mobile but most of the time they don't work. It took a while to get a freephone number from them and the first one they gave me didn't work, but this one does and I'm going to ring them every 48 hours until we have signal again," he said.

Neighbour Teresa Newman added: "We have received various explanations from a mast being down to the service switching to 3G or 4G. A vast majority of Chipping Campden residents only have mobile phones so it is incredibly inconvenient."

A spokesman for EE said: "The fault is the result of a technical issue one of our third party partners is experiencing. We are working with them to resolve it as soon as possible and apologise for any inconvenience caused."