An 80-year-old widower was put in danger by a blundering phone company, his neighbour has said.

John Moore, who lives on his own in Morden, was without a telephone line for three weeks earlier this month.

The technical problem disabled a potentially lifesaving alarm system and caused him to miss important news about hospital appointments.

Neighbour Mary Daly said she was “really concerned” by phone company Talk Talk’s failure to fix the problem, which was reported hours after the line went dead on September 3.

She said: “If anything happened to him we wouldn’t forgive ourselves.”

She and her husband called the company frequently since first reporting the problem. At one stage the company wrongly said the issue, which has not affected the house next to Mr Moore’s, had been fixed.

She also claims Talk Talk said finding a solution was a high priority – more than a week before it was eventually fixed on Monday.

On September 9 Mr Moore’s appointment at St Anthony’s hospice in North Cheam was cancelled at the last minute, but because his phone line was not working Mr Moore, who has a range of health problems and walks with a stick, was forced to make a wasted journey before being turned away by staff.

The problem also disabled his Mascot home alarm system, which provides a portable alarm vulnerable people can push at any time to be connected to a call centre via telephone and ask for help.

Mr Moore, who is from the United States but married a British woman and has lived in Morden since 1964, said: “I’ve never had to use it yet but you never know.”

A Talk Talk spokesman said: “We are sorry about the issues Mr Moore experienced.”