Ofcom Names the Worst UK Telecoms and Broadband ISPs for Q2 2015

The telecoms regulator has published its latest quarterly report into the volume of complaints experienced by all of the United Kingdom’s largest broadband, phone, mobile and TV providers. As usual the news is good for some providers (e.g. Sky Broadband, Virgin Media) and bad for others (e.g. EE).

Ofcom’s report typically focuses on the market’s biggest providers, specifically those that hold an overall customer market share of at least 1.5%. The complaints themselves are reported per 1,000 subscribers, thus providers described as generating the most or fewest complaints do so in relative terms (proportional to the others).

Overall the regulator claims to receive an average of just under 300 telecoms related complaints per day from consumers, although it’s worth pointing out that Ofcom itself does not tackle individual gripes (this is the responsibility of the providers and external ADR complaints handlers – more information).

However Ofcom can take action if a particular trend is spotted, which can result in providers being forced to pay a significant fine and or to amend their service practices. One recent example of this occurred when EE was fined £1 million for failing to comply with the regulator’s rules for handling consumer complaints (here).

The Results

It’s little surprise to find that EE are still top of the worst for fixed broadband connections with a score of 0.45 per 1,000 customers in Q2 2015, although that’s down from 0.51 last quarter. Problems relating to faults, service and provision (40%), billing, pricing and charges (20%) and complaints handling (20%) were the main drivers of complaints about EE, but they have recently pledged to do better (here).

Otherwise most of the ISPs showed an improvement over the previous quarter, except TalkTalk that increased slightly from 0.26 in Q1 to 0.27 now and that’s well above the industry average of 0.16 per 1,000 customers. Elsewhere Virgin Media and Sky Broadband can once again claim to have the lowest proportional level of complaints, good job.

It’s a similar story again where fixed line phone services are concerned, with EE having the highest level of complaints, although their score for Q2 of 0.34 per 1,000 customers is an improvement on the 0.39 seen in Q1. By comparison TalkTalk and the Post Office’s Home Phone service both saw a big rise in complaints.

As for mobile network operators, the story here is a bit different with Vodafone attracting the most complaints (0.14 complaints per 1,000 customers), although this hasn’t changed much since Q1. The main drivers of Vodafone complaints were problems with billing, pricing and charges (34%), complaints handling (27%) and concerns around faults, service and provision (17%).

Finally we come to Pay TV services, which for the first time in two years shows that BT’s TV service is no longer the most complained about and the operator dropped to a level of 0.11 complaints per 1,000 customers, which compares with 0.15 in Q1 2015. By contrast TalkTalk now takes the naughty boys spot, rising from 0.12 in Q1 to 0.15 in Q2.

The main reasons for TalkTalk complaints were fault, service and provision issues (36%), billing, pricing and charges (28%) and issues relating to complaints handling (17%).

Ofcom’s Complaints Report Q2 2015
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/../complaints/Q2-2015/