The regulator’s latest complaints bulletin showed that in the three-month period covering July to September 2015, BT was the most complained about of all United Kingdom pay-TV operators with 25 complaints per 100,000 customers.
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EE again attracted the most complaints for fixed line broadband, while Plusnet and BT saw significant increases in complaints, and grievances about Talk Talk remained higher than the industry average.
According to Ofcom, the main reasons for complaints against BT were fault, service and provision issues (31%); complaints handling (25%); and issues relating to billing, pricing and charges (22%).
EE continued to generate the highest relative complaint volumes per 100,000 (45) in Q3 2015, and these were mainly related to faults, service and provision issues; issues with billing, pricing, and charges; and complaints handling.
Virgin Media’s complaints (six per 100,000 customers) fell marginally below Sky’s total complaints volume (seven per 100,000 customers), making it the best performing provider for fixed line. Comments will appear on the live site as soon as they are approved by the moderator (within 24 hours).
Ofcom said that on average it receives slightly fewer than 300 telecoms complaints a day from consumers.
Ofcom director of content and consumer group Claudio Pollack said: “We expect providers to make customer service and complaints handling top priorities, so it’s disappointing to see a rise in the number of complaints”.
Ofcom is cracking down on providers over their complaints handling procedures, having fined EE £1m back in July for failing to provide customers with accurate information about their rights to use an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme.
“Ofcom is continuing work to make switching easier and our complaints data allows consumers to make meaningful comparisons that can be useful when looking for a new provider”.
To put the scale of the complaints in context, the industry average is five per 100,000.
Are you surprised at the complaints received by Ofcom?
There is an on-going investigation into complaints handling by Vodafone.
“Unfortunately, there were some complications during the highly complex migration exercise which meant a number of customers’ accounts were affected, although the vast majority of customers experienced no disruption or inconvenience”. CEO Tom Mockridge said: “With our customer focus and our superior network, we are pleased to come out as the UK’s least complained about bundled communications provider”.
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A spokesman apologised, saying “we know we need to do better” and claimed there had been an improvement more recently. “We have introduced new software and systems so customers can serve themselves online and so we keep our promises to call customers when we say we will”.
