Ofcom release the latest league tables

The Ofcom league table covers telecom provider performance over January to March 2021, including over the 3rd UK national lockdown.

Today, Ofcom released the latest league tables covering complaints regarding the leading telecom companies over the first three months in 2021.

Coinciding with the third national lockdown, the report reveals that whilst complaint levels remained “broadly stable” for mobile services, home phone and broadband complaints reached their highest level for three years. It reports, that pay-TV service complaints also increase.

The top providers covered in the report include; EE, Sky, BT and Virgin Media.

The impact of lockdown 3

Ofcom’s Consumer Protection Director, Fergal Farragher said ” These complaints figures are from the peak of the pandemic, which was a difficult time for everyone, including businesses.”

The demand for services such as broadband, increased due to the levels of people working from home, and the level of online learning for school children.

Over 40% of complaints concerned billing, charging issues & complaints handling.

Whilst faults and service provision were the highest cause of complaints across fixed broadband providers, over 40% of complaints were related to complaints handling (27%) and billing and charging issues (14%).

The broadband universal obligation (USO) launched in March 2020, and with the aim the empower customers to request the right to received a decent and affordable broadband connection

Customer Satisfaction & Payment Challenges

Looking over the report, many telecom providers have struggled during the intense period of the third lockdown, with many seeing spikes in complaints compared with the previous year. However, Ofcom states the suggestion that “people are broadly happy with their communications services”.

With the financial challenges presented by the pandemic and the continued stress on consumer debt as households recover, the report is likely to be concerning to some providers, as consumers continue to look to review how much value for money they’re experiencing and how easy it is to switch and save.