Ofcom
 Printable version
|
Latest phone, broadband and pay TV complaints revealed
Ofcom published the volumes of complaints made against the major providers of telecoms and pay TV services between January and March 2014.
This is Ofcom’s thirteenth quarterly report, which aims to provide useful information for consumers when choosing a provider and incentivise operators to improve their performance.
The total volume of telecoms and pay TV complaints made to Ofcom increased slightly in Q1 2014. Complaints were marginally higher quarter on quarter across landline, broadband and mobile pay-as-you-go services. Complaints in the mobile pay-monthly and pay TV sectors remained at the same level as in Q4 2013.
The report now presents pay-monthly mobile phone complaints against Orange, T-Mobile and 4GEE in a combined form – as ‘EE’. This reflects that EE has started to consolidate the three brands following the merger of Orange and T-Mobile.
Since Q4 2014, as part of its brand consolidation, EE has integrated its online and high street presence and unified the consumer experience in terms of network access and customer service operations.
Claudio Pollack, Director of Ofcom’s Consumer Group said: “Publishing complaints data is a key part of our work to provide useful comparative information for consumers, and drive improvements in quality of service across the communications sector.
“The report highlights the performance of providers relative to each other. This is valuable information that consumers may wish to consider alongside other factors such as price and availability, for example, when choosing a provider”.
Landline telephone services
In the landline telephone market, TalkTalk generated the most complaints during the first quarter of 2014, with 0.28 complaints per 1,000 customers.
Its complaints volumes increased slightly over the quarter and remained above the industry average. Complaints mainly related to service faults, complaints handling and billing.
BT also generated complaints above the industry average for its landline service at 0.23 per 1,000 customers in Q4 2013.
Virgin Media had the fewest number of complaints at 0.07 per 1,000 landline customers, while Sky attracted 0.10 per 1,000 customers – both below industry average.
