Ofcom Name the Worst UK Mobile, Phone and Broadband ISPs – Q3 2015

The telecoms regulator has today published their latest Q3 2015 complaints report, which reveals the volume of gripes received for all of the United Kingdom’s largest broadband, phone, mobile and TV providers. As usual EE takes a beating, while Sky Broadband and Virgin Media win praise.

Ofcom’s report focuses on the market’s biggest providers (i.e. those that hold an overall market share of at least 1.5%) and on average they receive nearly 300 telecoms complaints a day from consumers. Related gripes are likely to be made where a consumer has been unable to resolve an issue with their provider and sadly we don’t get any visibility of the complaints made to the ISPs themselves.

Providers can of course vary in size and so the regulator publishes complaints as a proportion of residential subscribers, which makes it easier to compare. Interestingly Ofcom has tweaked how it performs this calculation and now reports complaints per 100,000 customers, while prior updates reported per 1,000 subscribers. The reason for this change is not clear, although it does produce an easier to understand figure.

The Results

As usual we’ll start with the latest complaints for the biggest fixed line broadband ISPs, which once again finds that EE received the most gripes (45 complaints per 100,000 customers); albeit largely unchanged from the previous quarter. EE’s complaints were dominated by problems related to faults, service and provision (40%); billing, pricing and charges (20%); and complaints handling (19%).

Claudio Pollack, Director of Ofcom’s Consumer Group, 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. Consumers have a right to expect good service and will rightfully complain when that standard isn’t met. 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.”

Elsewhere TalkTalk, PlusNet and BT all saw a sudden spike in complaints, mostly related to a rise in the number of gripes linked to service faults and provision, with a range of 33 – 37 complaints per 100,000 customers.

Thankfully Sky Broadband and Virgin Media continued with their persistent trend of delivering the lowest level of consumer complaints of all the major broadband providers, which is also well below the industry average of 22 complaints per 100,000 customers.

The story for fixed line phone providers follows a roughly similar trend to the fixed broadband results above, albeit with some key differences. For example, EE had been attracting the most complaints for the past few quarters, but in Q3 2015 we suddenly see PlusNet shoot to 33 complaints per 100,000 customers (one below EE’s score of 34).

The main complaint drivers for EE’s landline customers were concerns about faults, service and provision (27%); problems changing provider (26%); and complaints handling (19%). By comparison PlusNet’s complaints surge has been driven by issues around faults, service and provision (30%); billing, pricing and charges (21%); and changing provider and complaints handling (both 19%).

Once again we see Virgin Media and Sky Broadband enjoying their position as the providers that attract the markets least complaints, at least in terms of the big players.

Meanwhile, on the mobile network operator front, we see that Vodafone has attracted a sharp rise and received 20 complaints per 100,000 customers. Most of the gripes against them relate to billing, pricing and charges (37%); complaints handling (28%); and concerns around faults, service and provision (17%).

The good news is that Three UK, O2 and Tesco Mobile have continued along a fairly steady path by attracting the fewest complaints, with both Talk Mobile and Virgin Mobile also seeing fewer gripes against their service and managing to duck below the industry average.

Finally we come to Pay TV services and it’s disappointing to report that BT’s previous downward trend (fewer complaints) has suddenly been reversed, with complaint volumes increasing significantly to 25 per 100,000 customers (up from 11 per 100,000 in Q2 2015).

The main reasons for BT’s rising complaints were linked to fault, service and provision issues (31%); complaints handling (25%); and issues relating to billing, pricing and charges (22%). By comparison everybody else held fairly flat, with both Virgin Media and Sky deserving praise for being below the industry average.. again.

Overall it was the fixed line broadband market that attracted the most complaints, followed by fixed line phone services. All of the other sectors (mobile, pay TV etc.) received considerably fewer complaints on a proportional basis. However it’s too early to say whether the Q3 2015 spike is just a singular event or one that is indicative of a more persistent problem.

Ofcom’s Complaints Report Q3 2015
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/../complaints/Q3-2015/