Puzzled shop bosses Sue and Marcus Walker-Reilly have 35,000 reasons for querying their telephone bill.

That's the number of calls BT logged over the last three months from their store, Norman Hobbs Hi-Fi in Sussex Road, Haywards Heath.

The bill comes in a three-inch thick wad and logs the same repeated call to an 0845 number 35,000 times, or every two minutes.

To meet the bill, Sue would have to fork out £1,800, instead of her usual payment of about £400.

But she admitted it could have been much worse.

Sue said: "In each case it has made the connection and then cut off.

"But there is a minimum charge of 4p and if you multiply that 35,000 times it's a lot of money.

"I am not particularly angry about this. I think it's quite amusing, although it was a bit of a shock at first.

"The bill has been disputed and BT are investigating it and we are quite happy with that."

The shop, a Sony dealership, recently had an extensive refit to give it more space.

But it would have had to fit dozens of phones in every corner to jack up its bill to the one Sue received.

Sue said: "We are not sure why this happened, but there is obviously a fault on the line.It's the only explanation.

"The number has been called every two minutes, but it literally only makes the connection and then it's cut off."

A BT spokesman said the disputed bill was being investigated.