A shop owner has spoken of her frustration after torrential rain left her without Internet, e-mails and a phone for more than three weeks – despite her business not flooding.
Customers at Annie Mo’s on Union Street could not even pay for their purchases with bank cards after a main server was damaged by severe weather that flooded the city earlier this month.
Judith McDonald, who owns the interiors shop, said she took just £50 on one day as shoppers struggled to come up with enough cash to pay for goods – and that business had taken a blow.
She has been unable to benefit from the ‘business disruption’ insurance she has been paying into because neither her shop nor warehouse were damaged.
Mrs McDonald said her business relied heavily on customers who logged into her website and ordered over the phone, and that the repercussions had been devastating.
She said: “It’s been three weeks of people not being able to phone us to check up on orders, three weeks of no one able to buy anything online, three weeks of telling people we have no cash machine.”
“Customers would come in to buy something and I would have to tell them we had no machine. Some would come back, some wouldn’t.
“It’s been a nightmare.”
Annie Mo’s server is based at the company’s warehouse near Union Square and Guild street, an area badly effected by the rain on July 7.
Aberdeen Airport was flooded, houses were wrecked and cars submerged under water following torrential downpours.
Annie’s Mo’s electronics went down on day one.
Mrs McDonald said: “We kept being told by BT it will be fixed by Tuesday. Then it was it will be fixed by Wednesday.
“But it never happened.”
Thankfully, by the weekend the card machine was working again and the shop assistants could access e-mails.
Mrs McDonald said she anticipates a repeat of the disruption and believes the old drains in and around the city centre cannot cope with heavy downpours.
She has contacted the city’s Business Improvement District and local councillors to call for action to put measures in place to ensure it does not happened again.
A BT spokesman said it was expected that all customers left without phone lines would now be reconnected. No further comment was available last night.