Metal theft in Borehamwood leaves people without phone, internet and television
4:35pm Wednesday 13th June 2012 in Where I Live By Bruce Thain
Metal theft leaves people without phone, internet and television
People lost their phone, internet and television service after metal thieves stole cables from a residential road last week.
Thieves stole the cable from Tempsford Avenue Borehamwood, affecting up to 60 customers of Virgin Media.
Police have said the incident took place between Thursday June 7 and Monday June 11 when it is believed men using a van and wearing high-visibility vests cut cables from different points in the road.
Jose Marques who is a Virgin Media customer said: “I’m not very happy about it really. We’ve been without a phone for six days.
“At first we thought it was something wrong with our phone so we bought a new one but after talking to Virgin they said it was a problem with our area.
“What annoys me is we pay for a service from the company but it took so long for them to get things working again.
“We have mobile phones but I have family in Portugal and the main way we talk to them is over the land line and they thought something had happened to us.”
A spokesperson for Virgin media said: “A small number of households in Tempsford Avenue have been affected by the theft of several Virgin Media cables. Our engineers are on-site and we’ll have our customers re-connected very soon.
“We take the issue of metal theft seriously and work with the police to identify and prosecute those responsible.
“We would encourage anyone with information about metal theft from Virgin Media street cabinets to contact the local police.”
Neighbourhood watch member Hans Luckemeyer said: “In situations like that if you see someone with a van in high visibility vests working around a man hole you just think they were workmen doing their job.
“If anyone saw them I don’t think they would have known they were up to no good.”
Police are still investigating the incident and are asking anyone who saw a vehicle at the time to get in contact.
