The ability to make a complaint is often essential but how many Internet Service Providers are transparent about the process and do some intentionally attempt to make the necessary contacts and information hard for novice net users to find? ISPreview.co.uk examined seven of the markets primary broadband ISPs to find out.<\/p>\n
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Ideally an ISPs complaint contacts and information should be easy for all to access, referenced on the front of a providers contact or help page (the first place that most people would think to look) and shown alongside the usual support contacts (email, phone numbers, address etc.).<\/p>\n
Similarly Ofcom<\/a> (communications regulator) requires that any internal ISP complaints which go unresolved for 8 weeks (the Deadlock Letter<\/strong> stage) should become subject to the option of an external Alternative Dispute Resolution<\/strong> (ADR) complaint handler process, which is an ombudsman service that can tackle the complaint on your behalf (ISP Complaints and Advice<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n The regulator expects all ISPs to make this ADR information transparent and even requires them to inform consumers about the process in writing (i.e. assuming your complaint has not already been resolved internally). Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen and a recent Ofcom<\/a> survey suggested that many consumers, specifically those who\u00a0are eligible to use an ADR, remain unaware of the service (here<\/a>).<\/p>\n As a result ISPreview.co.uk has decided to take a closer look at several of the markets most prominent broadband ISPs to see how easy it is for a novice to find the necessary information. In order to assist in this we asked for anecdotal feedback from friends and family, which included three casual Internet users aged 70+. Each was tasked with trying to hunt down any complaints related ISP contacts or information before reporting back. The feedback\u00a0was used to\u00a0help shape our view of each provider.<\/p>\n It should be noted that this study is NOT designed to be a direct test of customer support quality for specific products. Indeed our focus here is entirely on the ease of both finding and understanding the\u00a0information and contacts related to the complaints process (including ADRs)\u00a0via each providers website.<\/p>\n BT<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Our study group found\u00a0BT’s Help page<\/a>\u00a0to be a little\u00a0cluttered, which made it difficult to locate information about the complaints process. In the end we had to scroll right to the bottom of BT<\/a>’s website to find their ‘Contact’ link and thankfully a\u00a0‘Complaints’\u00a0option was then listed (note: there is a ‘Contact’ link on the help page too but it was often overlooked due to appearing lower down than other content).<\/p>\n Clicking through to the contact page, which required us to\u00a0select ‘Complaints’ a second time on the next page, took us to a contact\u00a0section that gave a phone number, email and postal address for the “BT<\/a> Correspondence Centre<\/em>“. We also noted a ‘Codes of Practice’ link at the bottom of BT’s site that took us to\u00a0a relevant policy page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Separately we quickly found an option for BT’s Complaints Code when typing ‘complaints’ into the search box on their website but\u00a0in order to access the necessary policy information we had to download an Adobe PDF document, which revealed some simple but useful information about the ADR process.<\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n Experienced\u00a0Internet users will often scroll to the bottom of a website in order to check for contact pages but others may not and customers who fail to do this could find themselves confused by BT’s Help section. Similarly the complaints policy\u00a0itself\u00a0required\u00a0users to\u00a0download a PDF file, which shouldn’t be necessary\u00a0and can cause confusion or other problems (there’s no reason why such information couldn’t be placed on\u00a0a web page). <\/em><\/p>\n But overall BT wasn’t too bad and some simple improvements, such as listing the ‘Contact’ page further up and making the complaints policy more obvious alongside the related contact options, would make a world of difference.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Sky Broadband<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n It didn’t take long for us to find the ‘Complaints’ page on Sky’s main website because the link was made immediately visible by hovering our mouse over their primary ‘Help and Support’ menu, which took as to a ‘How to complain to Sky<\/a>‘ page that\u00a0included all of the appropriate contact details and also linked through to Sky’s Complaint Code<\/a>.<\/p>\n The ‘Contact Us’ page, which was listed at the bottom of the site and under the\u00a0help section,\u00a0also made it similarly very easy to find\u00a0a\u00a0‘Make a complaint<\/a>‘ page but oddly this didn’t include any link to the complaints code and only offered the option of a live chat, phone call or email (no postal address like the main complaints page). It should be noted that typing ‘Complaints’ into the websites main search box also takes people to this page.<\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n Sky’s approach was simple,\u00a0informative and their complaints code appeared to cover all of the necessary areas. The only gripes we had were that the drop-down menu was sometimes overlooked (this makes the content harder to find) and far too many links took us to\u00a0Sky’s simplified\u00a0‘Make a complaint’ contact page, which\u00a0doesn’t contain any information about to their code or\u00a0include\u00a0the relevant postal address.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Virgin Media<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The first stop we made was to Virgin’s primary ‘Help’ page, which made no mention of complaints and after clicking around awhile we eventually spotted a ‘Contact Us<\/a>‘ link lower down on the right side (this is the same ‘Contact Us’ link that appears if you scroll to the very bottom of the website and is similarly easy to overlook).<\/p>\n After a bit of clicking around on the ‘Contact Us’ page we\u00a0uncovered\u00a0several complaint types mentioned under the ‘General Enquiry’ option, which\u00a0included one that opened a new window for Virgin’s Complaints Code<\/a>. However we noted that the code itself, which provided all the correct information,\u00a0was presented as a PDF file download and not\u00a0on a\u00a0webpage.<\/p>\n It should be said that typing ‘complaints’ into the websites main search box also offered a link to Virgin’s complaints code but take note that the relevant\u00a0link actually goes (at the time of writting)\u00a0to an out of date copy of the code with a different ADR handlers address.<\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n The experience of finding the correct complaints\u00a0info. was arguably more convoluted then it should have been but it didn’t take too long to dig it out. However we see no reason not to put the code into a simple web page instead of a PDF file\u00a0and the search engine\u00a0returned an out-of-date version of the code with a different ADR address. Ideally the ‘contact’\u00a0section should also be\u00a0more prominently displayed.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n TalkTalk<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The main ‘Help’ page link on TalkTalk<\/a>’s website made no mention of complaints and we struggled to find anything of relevance. Similarly the ISPs ‘Contact Us’ page, while useful for most things, didn’t offer a clear option for making complaints.<\/p>\n But after a lot of clicking around we finally found a link for the ‘Customer Complaints Code<\/a>‘ at the very bottom of TalkTalk<\/a>’s website in smaller text, which took us to a ‘How do I make a complaint?’ page. As usual the complaints page itself appeared to cover all of the necessary aspects.<\/p>\n Finally, typing ‘complaints’ into the search box on the help page displayed a link to the same section but take note that the front page search box is different and only appears to search the Internet in general, which is perhaps a\u00a0little confusing.<\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n TalkTalk could\u00a0have made the complaints page easier to find (e.g. putting a clear link on the contact page)\u00a0and its use of different internal search engines did more to confuse than help.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n EE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The experience of attempting to use EE<\/a>’s website can be summed up with one word, scrolling<\/em>, and a lot of it because this is what their big-spaced-out-text-and-pictures format forces you to do nearly all of the time. It might be simple but this can easily turn to frustration\u00a0once too much useful information gets stuffed below the fold of a page.<\/p>\n Surprisingly neither EE<\/a>’s ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Help’ sections produced any easy to\u00a0spot information about complaints and it was only after we entered ‘complaints’ into the Help page search system that the ‘How to make a complaint<\/a>‘ page finally cropped up. Later we also came across the complaints code by scrolling right to the bottom of EE’s website and clicking through from the ‘Codes of practice’ section.<\/p>\n The complaints page itself listed various contact methods\u00a0and like\u00a0some others above it also forces you to download the complaints code as a PDF file, which does at least contain all of the primary bits of\u00a0information.<\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n The code contains all of the necessary basics but EE could definitively\u00a0do a better job of making the information easier to find, perhaps by listing a clear link on their Help or Contact page where you’d normally expect to find it. Once again we’re also surprised that the key\u00a0info. is only available via a PDF download.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Zen Internet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Zen are often one of the highest rated providers and do a good job of making their support contacts easy to find. As a result we were not surprised to find that the link to their Complaints Procedure<\/a>\u00a0was found on their ‘Contact Us’ page, albeit right at the bottom, and that all the necessary information was then provided (without needing to download any additional PDF files).<\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n It didn’t take us long to find the correct details but there are still areas that Zen could improve. The ‘Complaint Procedure’ section should ideally be more prominently highlighted on their contacts page and could do with being similarly added to their ‘Help & Support’ section too.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n PlusNet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n PlusNet<\/a> generally has a good track record for customer support and so we were a little surprised that they made no mention of\u00a0a complaint policy on the first page of their ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Help & Support’ sections. However we did spot a link to their general PlusNet Code of Practice<\/a> section and this went to a page that does link into the ISPs Complaints Code of Practice<\/a>. Similarly the help page’s search engine also brought the code up\u00a0after we typed ‘complain’ into the box.<\/p>\n The code itself was presented clearly\u00a0via a new web page and provided all of the necessary details.<\/p>\n Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n The actual complaint page ticked all of the boxes but we still felt that PlusNet<\/a> hadn’t made the related contact details and information easy enough to find. Even the general code of practice page berried it right down the list at no.12.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The first and most\u00a0important thing to say here is that not one of the ISPs failed to include a complaint policy and in fact every single provider offered content that did an acceptable job of explaining the key points. On the other hand some providers appeared to make the information harder to find than others and there\u00a0was\u00a0some clear room for improvement.<\/p>\n In some cases we\u00a0had to\u00a0fiddle with the websites internal search engine to locate the necessary details, although not everybody will know to do this.\u00a0For example,\u00a0TalkTalk’s site had two different web-search systems and the primary one doesn’t appear to check their own website (confusing). In other cases we needed to scroll to the bottom of a page and or click through a variety of small-text links to find the right area.<\/p>\n The approach of sticking complaint policy’s behind an Adobe Reader<\/strong> (PDF) file, which was adopted by BT, Virgin Media<\/a> and EE,\u00a0also appears to be\u00a0quite common. On the surface this might not seem\u00a0like a big issue\u00a0but not all systems support PDF out-of-the-box and even some of those that do don’t make it easy to use or navigate. We see no reason for not putting it directly onto a webpage.<\/p>\nThe Study<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Conclusion & Tips<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n