Thieves caused communication chaos for hundreds of BT customers when they stole 200 metres of telephone cable.

Residents making and receiving calls ended up speaking to complete strangers following the break-in at a BT box in Tattenham Corner, Epsom, last Tuesday.

Customers were cut off from the internet and cable television, and some homeowners still had no connection this week.

Derek Brooker, of Rose Bushes, Epsom Downs, said: “We’ve been without a decent telephone service for a week, the system went down completely last Tuesday and we don’t get any incoming or outgoing calls.

“The service partly started on Thursday evening but we are still getting calls in now from people trying to call different numbers, and have the same problem with calls going out.

“At the moment we can’t get any incoming calls.”

He said many people in his road were still suffering from the cut-off. Callers to his number have been getting through to a messaging service, but Mr Brooker was concerned he will never pick them up as he does not normally have an answerphone.

He added: “About six people said they’ve had numerous calls wrongly routed to them and they can’t get any out. There may well be people that are unaware that they’ve not been able to receive any incoming calls for a week.”

The thieves struck between 9pm and 10pm last Tuesday, stealing £15,000 worth of copper cable.

BT said its engineers have been working to restore the connection as soon as possible.

A spokeswoman for BT said it needed to replace the cable before speaking to individual customers who “experienced a mixture of problems” to ensure their service was working again.

She said: “There were certainly in the realms of hundreds that reported faults to us.”

Anyone with information about the thefts should contact Surrey Police on 0845 125 2222, quoting reference RB/10/8903.