Quantcast
Menu
Save, make, understand money

Household Bills

EE still receives most broadband gripes

Joanna Faith
Written By:
Joanna Faith
Posted:
Updated:
30/03/2016

EE is still the most complained about broadband provider in the UK, continuing a dreadful track record.

Ofcom’s complaint figures for October to December last year showed the firm received 34 complaints per 100,000 customers. This is the third consecutive quarter EE has topped the regulator’s broadband complaints list.

It was closely followed by Plusnet, which got 32 per 100,000 and TalkTalk with 31 per 100,000.

Issues about EE were mainly to do with faults, service problems, billing, pricing, and charges.

At the other end of the spectrum, Virgin and Sky generated the lowest number of broadband complaints with seven and six per 100,000 customers respectively.

Mobile phones

Vodafone was the most complained about mobile phone provider.

The firm received 32 complaints per 100,000 pay-monthly mobile customers, considerably higher than the industry average of 10 per 100,000.

Ofcom said complaints mainly related to issues about billing, pricing and charging, complaints handling, and service faults.

All other providers covered in the report – EE, O2, Talk Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Three and Virgin Mobile – generated complaints about mobile phones below the industry average, with Tesco Mobile receiving the lowest number of complaints with just one complaint per 100,000 customers.

Landlines

TalkTalk received the most complaints from landline customers with 30 per 100,000. Plusnet, EE, Post Office HomePhone and BT also received complaint volumes above the industry average of 15 per 100,000.

Virgin received the least complaints compared to the other fixed line providers in the report with just five per 100,000.

An EE spokesperson said: “We’re pleased to see the positive progress we’ve made with customer service since Ofcom’s previous report. We’ve improved our service and now perform better than the mobile industry average, and we remain committed to our ongoing investment in providing an even better experience for our customers.

However, while complaints have reduced by over 20%, there is still work to be done to improve our landline and broadband service. Last year we introduced a broadband service improvement programme including 500 new UK roles to help provide better service. We will continue to invest, increasing the number of customer service agents for broadband and improving our systems to meet our ambition of becoming number one for service in the industry.”

A Vodafone UK spokesperson said: “We are working hard to improve our customers’ experience and more recent data is showing an improvement. Due to new processes we have put into place, helped by significant additional call centre resources, we believe that customers will continue to see further improvements over the coming months. We would like to apologise to any customer who has had an issue with our service.

“The points highlighted in this report largely relate to a major programme we undertook last year to transfer customers onto a new billing system, aimed at simplifying the operation of their accounts and opening up a range of better services, such as “click and collect”.  Unfortunately, there were some problems during the highly complex migration. Now that the migration exercise is essentially complete, we expect our £2 billion pound investment in our network and services will start to deliver a step change in customer experience.”