BT Broadband Named (and Shamed) as officially the UK’s “Most Complained”

BT has come in at number one in a list of the most complained about broadband/TV providers in the UK, it was revealed today.

The report, published by Ofcom, covers the amount of complaints lodged over the last three months of 2013. The figures are totalled by offsetting the number of complaints Ofcom received against the total number of customers paying for the service. 

The result marks the first time that EE has not topped the list in over a year. However, it is worth noting that they did not do well.

Ofcom received 32 complaints for every 100,000 fixed-broadband customers. The issues discussed were mainly with persistent technical faults or else poor customer service.

According to the report’s executive summary, “On average, Ofcom receives just under 300 telecoms complaints a day from consumers. Such complaints are likely to be made where a consumer has been unable to resolve an issue with their provider to their satisfaction”.

John Smith, 28, who has been a BT customer since 2011, shared his own experiences with us, “It was infuriating” he said, “I told the adviser I was having problems connecting to the Internet in my home office – and he told me to set my computer up in the hallway! When I baulked at his suggestion, he simply told me that he’d offered me a solution to the problem and that I’d refused to take it, so the fault was with me!”

The man Mr. Smith spoke to was, according to his account of the nearly two-hour phone call, a supervisor. Apparently, the supervisor also refused point blank when Mr. Smith requested that an engineer be sent out to assess the problem first hand. “I came to him for help and he all but called me an idiot. Even more annoyingly, I was actually promised an extra installation for free by one person, only to later be told by another that I’d need to pay £130”.

“BT is disappointed with the results,” said Libby Barr, managing director of BT customer service. She went on to say that, “BT is the fastest-growing business by far in the UK for both pay TV and broadband, and as we process more transactions we have unfortunately suffered more disruption than companies with static or declining customer bases.”

However, Virgin Media, who actually had the lowest number of complaints in the study, responded by noting that it too had increased its customer base in 2013.

SOURCES

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/telecoms-research/complaints/q4-oct-dec-2013/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26757049