Three UK Fined GBP250K by Ofcom for Customer Complaint Failings

Mobile operator Three UK has been fined £250,000 by the United Kingdom’s national telecoms regulation, Ofcom, after it failed to handle some customer complaints in a fair and timely manner.

Ofcom’s investigation, which was officially launched on 25th September 2013 (here), found that some complaints were closed without the company establishing that they were fully resolved. In other cases Three UK failed to log calls from customers as complaints when it should have done.

As a result related gripes were often not treated as part of Three UK’s formal complaints process and they did not make customers aware of Ofcom’s relevant Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) schemes.

Claudio Pollack, Ofcom’s Consumer and Content Group Director, said:

“When things go wrong, customers are not only entitled to complain to their provider, but must have confidence that their complaint will be dealt with fairly. That’s why we impose strict rules on providers on how they must handle complaints.

We treat any failure to follow these rules very seriously. The fine imposed on Three takes account of the shortcomings in its complaints handling, but reflects that the harm to consumers in this case was limited. The company fully co-operated with our investigation and has now taken steps to ensure it’s compliant with the rules on complaints handling.”

In fairness the ADR process itself, which was setup to help resolve problems that have gone unresolved for 8 weeks, is far from perfect and telecoms operators can easily end up being charged around £350 +vat in fees (examples here and here), regardless of whether they win or lose the case. This may be one reason why Three UK used such questionable tactics to avoid going down that path.

The ISPA recently proposed some potential solutions to these issues (here). Meanwhile Three UK’s penalty, which must be settled within the next 30 days, will be paid to Ofcom and then passed on to HM Treasury.