Video courtesy of BBC Radio Leeds
Widower Stan Beaton cried tears of joy after telephone engineers found the voicemail recording of his late wife he thought was lost forever.
Stan, 68, of Mirfield, was left devastated in December when an upgrade of his phone line by Virgin Media wiped the precious greeting he had kept for 14 years.
The retired forklift truck driver took comfort in the voice of wife Ruby, who died of stomach cancer aged 63 in May, 2003.
Stan had been assured by the phone company that the recording would be saved after the upgrade and the firm was forced to apologise and offered to make donations to Stan’s favourite charities after the blunder.
Red-faced bosses, though, didn’t stop there and put a team of 10 engineers on the case until the recording was recovered.
Stan was overcome with emotion when he was played a recording of the voicemail and said: “I felt pure elation and just couldn’t believe it. I thought the recording was gone forever.
“I can’t thank Virgin Media enough. Putting 10 people on the job must have cost them a fortune. I am staggered by that.”
Stan, who was married to Ruby for 20 years, often used to listen to the voicemail when he was feeling down.
He had previously tried to record the message to ensure it wasn’t lost but said: “All I ended up with were blank tapes.”
Virgin is planning to send a CD of the recording to Stan and the grateful pensioner has a treat for the engineer who finally retrieved the message.
“I’ve got a nice bottle of Glenfiddich with their name on it,” he said.
