IRATE customers have been flooding the internet with complaints about a phone recycling company.

Fonecraze, based in Footscray Road, New Eltham, promises to pay up to £300 for new, used or damaged phones within seven days of receiving them.

But over the past three months many customers have taken to Facebook, complaining they were offered an initial price, followed by a lower one when the company claims to discover damage on the handset. They then hear nothing back.

Iris Jones, 42, of Roundtable Road, Bromley, sent her Nokia phone in on March 27 but has not received the money she was promised.

She said: “They’re still trading today, yet very few people seem to have had their payment sent out.

“Emails don’t get answered, their phone just rings and rings and rings.”

Along with others, Ms Jones has complained to Greenwich Council’s Trading Standards and the BBC’s Watchdog programme.

She said: “It’s so frustrating. I have to calm myself down because I was getting so irate.”

Martin Rochester, 46, sent in his Blackberry on March 12 but after receiving no payment that month he wrote a letter giving them 14 days to pay - a deadline that has long passed.

The IT manager, from Colchester, said: “I wish I’d looked at the Facebook site before I started all this.”

Similar complaints have been raised on the web about the Lithuanian firm’s sister company Skyphones.

When News Shopper paid the New Eltham office a visit, mobile phone boxes were piled high in one corner.

We were told the problems were due to hold-ups in the company’s Hong Kong office, where the phones are sent.

Office manager Michael Palaimait insisted customers would be paid and said: “I know we’ve had bad problems. I’m clearing that up at the moment.”

But despite requests to speak to the company’s boss, he has not contacted us.

Greenwich Trading Standards was also unavailable for comment.