Broadband complaints surged to an all-time high during lockdown in the first three months of this year, with Virgin Media receiving the most complaints.
According to Ofcom, Virgin received the most complaints per 100,000 about their broadband, pay-TV, and landline phones between January and April 2021, while the UK faced its third national lockdown.
The majority of these complaints focused on complaints handling (39%), fault and service issues (33%), and billing problems (13%).
Plusnet, Vodafone, and TalkTalk are said to have also generated complaints above the industry average during this period when many customer call centres were closed due to the Covid-19 lockdown.
(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
A spokesperson for Virgin Media told ISPreview that providing great customer service remains their “number one priority”.
They said: “Since Ofcom collected its data for this report, we have made a number of improvements to our customer service, including hiring more than 500 care agents, which has seen complaints decrease by 70% putting them at their lowest level since 2018.”
Along with Three, Virgin Mobile was also targeted for having the highest volume of pay monthly mobile complaints.
(Image: EE)
Meanwhile, EE and Sky generated the lowest number of broadband complaints per 100,000 subscribers in the same period, while Sky received the lowest number of pay-TV complaints.
EE said: “EE receives the fewest complaints of any mobile, landline, and broadband provider in the UK.
“This reflects the hard work of our teams in UK and Ireland contact centres providing the best local and personal service to our customers.”
(Image: PA)
Ofcom provides a third-party regulatory service to the UK’s communication networks, giving consumers an avenue to challenge phone and broadband providers when their own internal complaint processes don’t deliver the goods.
Despite the complaints, Ofcom says that people are “broadly happy” with their communications services across the UK, with 90% of people reportedly “satisfied” with their mobile services.