Chiswick Hedone in Top 100 Restaurants in the world

Chiswick restaurant Hedone which features in the Top 100 Restaurants of the World, is taking action against BT for loss of business over a faulty phone.

The restaurant, which has a Michelin Star and opened two years ago, claims that bungling by the telephone company led to loss of revenue because customers could not get through to make bookings.

They are seeking £10,000 in compensation from BT after being left without a fully operating landline for nearly three weeks.

Hedone was forced to use temporary numbers which it says left it without a reservation line. And the restaurant still ended up with the same phone system because, it claims, BT levied an upgrade charge of £1,400 to the price originally quoted.

Aurelie Jean-Marie-Flore, Hedone’s front-of-house manager, told the Evening Standard said she wanted a system that could transfer calls between the kitchen and the office but it proved so difficult for BT to do that so she had to solve the problem herself with a three-way phone system. She said the restaurant relies heavily on phone bookings and that it gets enquiries from all over the world.

"We’re one of the 100 best restaurants in the world, we’re not a takeaway pizza place. We looked so unprofessional to our customers. No one at BT is apologising and on top of that they charge us £130 to fix the line again, it’s incredible,” she says.

If the restaurant fails to get compensation it may take legal action.

BT has apologised and said there was an initial delay, and the customer had then cancelled the phone line the day it was due to be installed, which resulted in its being disconnected. She said the company would be in touch to agree "suitable redress".