A jeweller has complained of a month-long battle to get BT to connect its phone lines.

Management at Argenteus Jewellery intended to open its new shop in Cornmarket Street, Oxford, on Monday. But phone lines needed to make credit and debit card transactions in the shop were not connected by then.

Jane Nunn, operations manager of Argenteus, which is currently based in Golden Cross, said: "We'd have had no shop alarm and nothing to use for the credit cards."

Staff decided to delay the opening of the shop until the end of week, which allowed extra time to complete the interior fitting of the shop.

And the phones have now been connected.

Lines were ordered from BT a month ago. But BT then said it may not be able to connect the premises -which used to be part of Boots - because there were no cable feeding in to the building which would support and internal phone line.

Ms Nunn said it had been very difficult to find out what BT was doing about the problem and added that it had been "three weeks of sheer grief", during which staff had spoken to six different people from BT to try to solve the problem.

"It's the telephone company that doesn't communicate," said Ms Nunn.

"There's a complete lack of customer care."

BT spokesman Francis King said the work was always scheduled to be completed on Tuesday because it wasn't possible to do it earlier.

"New ducting and cabling had to be laid to the building because there wasn't existing cabling in there.

"It did require new underground cabling," he said.

He said new cables were also run to the new Starbucks coffee shop next door the same day.

The coffee shop opened a day on Monday of this week without being connected.