Communications Ombudsman Report Surge in UK Telecoms Complaints
The Communications Ombudsman, which is one of the two Ofcom approved Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) providers for UK consumers of broadband ISPs, mobile and landline phone operators, has released its complaints data for the first half of 2024 and reported a 54% increase in telecoms cases accepted vs the same time last year.
Ofcom requires that all such providers – those offering services to consumers and small businesses – must be members of an approved ADR scheme. The schemes are free for consumers to access and designed to supplement (not replace) your provider’s own internal complaint procedure(s), although ISPs often have to pay sizeable costs regardless of whether they win or lose a case.
The ADR process is usually seen as a last line of defence for consumers and thus such schemes are generally only used after a dispute has gone unresolved for 8 weeks, or earlier with the agreement of their provider (i.e. the “Deadlock Letter” stage). See our ISP Complaints and Advice section for more information.
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The new data reveals that, between January and June 2023, a total of 11,466 cases were accepted by the Communications Ombudsman, which compares to 17,695 between January and June 2024. The main complaint categories so far in 2024 are service quality, billing, and contract issues, which reflect a similar pattern to the previous year.
The five most common complaint types
| Complaint type | Jan – June 2023 | Jan – June 2024 |
| Billing | 2700 | 4403 |
| Service quality | 2795 | 3605 |
| Customer service | 1716 | 3934 |
| Contract issues | 1268 | 1895 |
| Equipment | 1033 | 982 |
Andy Eadle, Business Unit Director at the Communications Ombudsman, told ISPreview:
“We’ve seen an increase in complaints across all dispute categories, but primarily in service quality (speed and reliability of service), and billing – continuing into the first half of 2024.
In 2023 we onboarded an additional major provider, which means more consumers than ever are now able to access our free and impartial dispute resolution services in 2024. As Communications Ombudsman, we’re here to ensure any dispute between consumer and provider can be resolved independently and fairly.”
However, it is disappointing that they don’t include a breakdown of the data by provider, since we have no doubt that consumers would be interested to see which broadband ISPs and mobile operators are attracting the lion’s share of complaints and in what areas – particularly as these tend to reflect issues that the ISP has been unable to resolve with their customers.
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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> In 2023 we onboarded an additional major provider
Presumably it should be public information which one they are talking about, since all current members of both ADR schemes are listed here:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/service-quality/adr-schemes/
… but they don’t make it easy to find!
Virgin Changed ADR scheme, as their information was out of date when I tried to find which scheme they were in to raise a complaint**. So I am going to say VM were the switch (and probably the reason for the increase in complaints?! )
In fact – if you google “Virgin media CEDR CISAS” – you’ll see a PDF linked from Virgin media business “legal” – which still tells you to raise it with CEDR/CISAS… But they’re no longer covered as they’ve moved to the Communication Ombudsman as above. Pretty poor showing from them actually, might be worth seeing if you can nudge someone Mark? I’m surprised CEDR/CISAS haven’t complained, though to raise a complaint online you have to search for the company first and they don’t show up.
** the complaint for this was a VM House move, to another premise. The contract had just ended and they forced a re-contract (fair enough) but they didnt process the package to the price quoted (Same package, but the price was ridiculously inflated) – each time it was raised you’d either get hung out on hold, passed around, or cut off. ADR process resolved it very quickly, corrected the issue they were refusing to do, and included compensation.
It’s def worth going through them when an ISP is abusing their position (in this case the only available network that was more than 20bmit)
Having just had a complaint go through the Comms Ombudsman against O2, I was astounded when O2 claimed they didn’t have enough staff to deal with complaints.
Mine was not investigated in 10 weeks and the Ombudsman found them guilty of not investigating. It appears that they think its cheaper to let cases go to the Ombudsman paying what I guess may be £700 per case plus damages/goodwill rather than employ the staff they need and save their image.
By the way, despite having told the Ombudsman they paid me on the 3rd of September, no payment is shown and the O2 management team are refusing to pay because they cannot find the Ombudsman instruction – how damn bizare is that?
What’s more concerning too is this is a fraud related complaint and O2 now have to deal with the legal authorities for failures. They just make a rod for their own back.