SCORES of mobile phone users have been experiencing signal problems in North Somerset over the past few weeks.

Staff at Nailsea shop, Go Mobile, have said they have been seeing five times the number of customers per day than they normally do since the problem first began on Christmas Eve.

Readers have also got in touch with the Times via email and through the social networking site Streetlife to talk about the problems they are experiencing with reception on their Orange, T Mobile and Virgin handsets.

Neil Marshall, from Nailsea, said: “The signal is patchy and loss of connection happens many times each day. This has been ongoing for almost three weeks.

“Orange Customer Services will not even acknowledge that there is a fault.

“Other people I have spoken to have been receiving all sorts of varying reasons for the problem.”

Andy Portman, area manager for Go Mobile, has been helping out staff at the Nailsea store, which has been bombarded with complaints from customers about their lack of service.

Mr Portman said: “We have been inundated with customers reporting problems. Some people have bought new phones because of the difficulties.

“This is one of the quietest stores. We would normally get about half a dozen people in each day, but lately we’ve been getting 30-40 people.”

EE, which runs Orange, Virgin and T Mobile networks, confirmed there had been problems with the network but said engineers had fixed the problem on Thursday.

A spokesman for the firm said: “We have seen signal issues in the area over recent weeks due to a configuration error, occurring during routine, but complex, network upgrade works.

“Engineers have worked to correct the situation and full coverage is now restored. We apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers.”