NOW Broadband Tops Ofcom Q1 2024 Table for UK Consumer Complaints
Ofcom has published their latest quarterly (Q1 2024) study of UK consumer complaints, which saw NOW Broadband (NOW TV) being labelled as the worst provider for attracting the most gripes about broadband and landline phone, while Virgin Media did the same for pay TV services and O2 were the worst for Mobile.
Take note that the regulator’s report only covers complaints that Ofcom itself has received and not those sent directly to an ISP, the ISPA or an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) complaints handler (i.e. Communications Ombudsman or CISAS). Ofcom does not deal with individual complaints, but they do monitor them and can take action if enough people raise a concern.
Otherwise, the results below reflect a proportion of residential subscribers (i.e. the total number of quarterly complaints per 100,000 customers per provider), which makes it easier to compare providers in a market where ISPs can vary significantly in size. But sadly, the study only covers feedback from the largest ISPs (i.e. those with a market share of at least 1.5%) due to limited data.
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Take note that the proportion of people who were satisfied with their communications services in 2023 was 77% (unchanged from last year) for landline services, 82% (down from 83%) for broadband and 87% (down from 91%) for all mobile services.
Fixed Line Home Broadband Complaints
NOW Broadband (NOW TV) rather unexpectedly attracted the most broadband complaints in Q1 2024, with customers’ complaints mainly being driven by how their complaints were being handled. On the flip side, Sky Broadband, which is actually the parent of NOW TV, continued to attract some of the fewest complaints of all the listed providers.
| Q2 2023 | Q3 2023 | Q4 2023 | Q1 2024 | |
| BT | 13 | 11 | 11 | 9 |
| EE | 7 | 9 | 9 | 14 |
| NOW Broadband | 13 | 18 | 18 | 22 |
| Plusnet | 11 | 11 | 9 | 8 |
| Shell Energy | 13 | 13 | 14 | 6 |
| Sky Broadband | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| TalkTalk | 18 | 15 | 13 | 11 |
| Virgin Media | 15 | 32 | 20 | 18 |
| Vodafone | 24 | 15 | 14 | 16 |
| Industry Average | 12 | 15 | 12 | 11 |
Fixed Line Phone Complaints
NOW Broadband (NOW TV) also attracted the most complaints for fixed line phone services and for the same reason. By comparison, Sky Broadband (Sky Talk) attracted some of the fewest complaints, although the provider attracting the lowest proportion of complaints this time was actually new entrant Utility Warehouse. Well done UW.
| Q2 2023 | Q3 2023 | Q4 2023 | Q1 2024 | |
| BT | 7 | 7 | 7 | 5 |
| EE | 6 | 5 | 3 | 11 |
| NOW Broadband | 7 | 11 | 10 | 12 |
| Plusnet | 7 | 7 | 6 | 5 |
| Shell Energy | 10 | 8 | 12 | 4 |
| Sky Talk | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| TalkTalk | 10 | 10 | 9 | 8 |
| Utility Warehouse | 1 | |||
| Virgin Media | 10 | 19 | 13 | 11 |
| Vodafone | 8 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| Industry Average | 7 | 8 | 7 | 6 |
Mobile Complaints
Mobile operators generally enjoy lower complaint levels than fixed line providers, but O2 still attracted the most gripes during the quarter, with issues around how customers’ complaints were being handled driving most of it. By comparison, Tesco Mobile attracted the fewest gripes. The table list’s BT Mobile too, but they’ve long stopped selling mobile plans to new customers and will be removed in the next update.
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| Q2 2023 | Q3 2023 | Q4 2023 | Q1 2024 | |
| BT Mobile | 8 | 5 | 3 | |
| O2 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| iD Mobile | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| Sky Mobile | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Tesco Mobile | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Three UK | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Virgin Mobile | 8 | |||
| Vodafone | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| EE | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Industry Average | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
Pay TV Complaints
Finally, Virgin Media attracted the most complaints for Pay TV and the key driver for most of those gripes stemmed from issues with how customer complaints were being handled. Meanwhile, Sky TV and EE jointly received the fewest pay-TV complaints.
| Q2 2023 | Q3 2023 | Q4 2023 | Q1 2024 | |
| EE (prev. BT) | 10 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
| Sky TV | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| TalkTalk | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Virgin Media | 10 | 20 | 13 | 11 |
| Industry Average | 5 | 7 | 5 | 4 |
Ofcom’s Consumer Complaints Report Q1 2024
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/../telecoms-and-pay-tv-complaints
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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This isn’t always a great metric for one to judge complaints as for example Sky Broadband might be low complaints passed to Ofcom but this is likely because Sky chuck money at anyone complaining to them
But a bit odd that now just being a brand of Sky is performing so much worse. I suspect it’s due to the high value customers being Sky (TV, broadband, phone and mobile) with Now mostly being the broadband only customers. When a now customer complains there is perhaps less wriggle room to strike a deal
ISPReview contacted NOW Broadband for a statement, they replied “Move along please, nothing to see or do as we’ve buried NOW Broadband under Sky Broadband and there is no problem as reported. Sky listened to its customers as they were telling us they wanted the stability of 24 month minimum contract terms and great customer service!…. /sarcasm
Think Shell Energy has turned in a pretty special performance here. in the last few months – won a Which? award for best router beating the likes of Sky and equal fewest complaints with Sky.
Pitty its exiting the market.
Last month NOW changed how their broadband offerings were to be provided – essentially all new connections are to be “powered by Sky” (with access to full Sky customer service), so are basically just cheaper Sky Broadband tariffs which can only be accessed via the NOW TV website.
Over time I expect ‘legacy’ NOW Broadband customers will be encouraged to move over to a new “powered by Sky” package – not least as ‘legacy’ NOW didn’t offer FTTP.
Looks like the migration problems seem by EE previously reported by this site a few days ago are affecting more than just the “small number” of customers that management seem to think.
Isn’t this all meaningless anyway seeing as OFCOM don’t deal with consumer complaints. Surely a better metric would be to look at Ombudsman services or CISAS for complaints settled against the ISP in question? It would help weed out spurious, senseless complaints from some customers that like to have a moan over nothing.
Now went from having great customer service based in the same building as sky, to shocking service from an overseas call centre. We had 2x price rises in 12m (the first of which we only spotted via future billing, zero notification about our right to leave within 30 days). Raised complaints which were never responded to.
I used to recommend Now all the time, I’d avoid them at all costs based on my experiences, looks like we’re not the only ones.