Spend Local: Bangor woman received 4,500 calls after email error

Helen McMahon's first aid training business was contacted thousands of times

A Bangor woman received more than 4,500 phone calls after the Spend Local scheme accidentally gave out her business number instead of their helpline.

An email reminding people to spend the remainder of their prepaid cards before the deadline was sent on Thursday.

However the number was wrong by one digit and went through to Helen McMahon's first aid training firm.

She tried to respond to most callers, the Belfast Telegraph reported.

"At the start of the Spend Local scheme I was getting a lot of phone calls because there is one digit difference between my business landline number and theirs," she told BBC's Good Morning Ulster.

"Then that sort of died away and I was getting one or two calls a day and then from Thursday evening my phone went mad and all these voicemails were being left.

"I thought all these people were looking for first aid training coming up to Christmas.

"I was listening to them and one woman in particular sounded lovely and I rang her back and explained she had misdialled and she read out the email and forwarded it to me and I realised, oh my goodness and that was the start of it."

'Turn a negative into a positive'

Ms McMahon said she listened to as many messages as she could and tried to call them back to let them know it was the incorrect number.

"Some were older people, some were very distressed. They're asking for someone to call them back leaving a voicemail expecting a phone call back and they're not going to get one because they're ringing me.

"I felt I had a duty. I could take this one or two ways, get really upset or turn a negative into a positive and phone these people back and help them."

She added: "Every year at this time we're told to think about a lot of elderly who choose between heat or eat and for some people that £100 card meant an awful lot.

"So I thought, I need to try and help these people and phone them back."

The deadline to spend remaining balances on the Spend Local card was 19 December

Ms McMahon said the vast majority of people she phoned back were "really lovely and I only had one woman who was really nasty to me".

She said most callers wanted to check their card balances but also rang about cards being declined or lost.

• Some Spend Local cards to arrive after deadline

• Investigation over under-18s Spend Local exclusion

The Spend Local team then had problems getting through to Ms McMahon to resolve the error due to the amount of calls she was receiving.

She said she tried to email Economy Minister Gordon Lyons but received an automatic out-of-office reply.

She was eventually contacted by the Spend Local team on Friday evening, whom she said were "very apologetic - those people have been having it a lot harder than I've been having it".

"They were trying to ring my landline but it was just jammed and they couldn't get through," she said.