The owner of a petrol station claims he has lost £10,000 in business after a string of power cuts.
Lee Nagdawala, who runs the Fishergate Filling Station on Bow Lane, Preston, said he had been hit by a string of cuts which had left him unable to sell petrol for up to two hours at a time.
But, because the outages did not last over four hours he is not eligible to claim compensation for loss of earnings.
Electricity North West confirmed 43 customers were impacted by the problems which it fixed at the end of last week.
Mr Nagdawala said: “I cannot have customers coming into the shop without power, the petrol pumps do not operate and I cannot shut the security shutters without it.
“The power was going out for an hour-and-a-half at a time and every time I was losing £150 of stock in the freezer which I had to throw away, but I was losing £1,000 a time on fuel sales.”
He said he had spoken with Electricity North West, which has a regional base on nearby Hartington Road, about claiming compensation for loss of earning but told he did not qualify.
The garage owner said: “I was told that the power had to go off for more than four hours before I would be able to make a claim.
“We had around 12 outages which went on for less than two hours but I am told that does not make any difference.”
A spokesman for Electricity North West confirmed there had been “four transient faults” in the Bow Lane area between December 21 and December 29.
She added the faults had been visited by engineers last week with repairs being completed last Wednesday.
Response manager Phil Briggs said: “We apologise to customers affected by this intermittent underground cable fault.
“The nature of this fault made it very difficult to identity.
“Our engineers have been on site and repaired the fault by using specialist equipment to detect the exact location of the fault so that we can unearth the cable in the right place to repair it.
“The fault affected 43 customers in the area.”
Mr Nagdawala confirmed the faults had not reoccurred since last week, but said he would continue to press his claims for compensation.
He said: “Ours is one of only a handful of businesses affected by the problem, so we are something of a lone voice.
“My concern is that something like this can easily happen again and I cannot afford any further lost trade.”
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