A recent Freedom of Information Request (FoIR) filed by Broadband Genie has revealed that complaints to Ofcom about UK telecoms providers (broadband, mobile etc.) increased by 37% last year to 34,000. In response, the comparison site has published a new survey of customer service, which sees YouFibre, Trooli and Zen Internet top the table.
Consumers typically send their complaints about internet service and phone providers to different places, such as the provider itself, Ofcom, the ISPA or any one of two independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) complaints handlers (i.e. Communications Ombudsman or CISAS).
Ofcom does not typically investigate individual complaints themselves (they normally leave that up to ISPs and the ADR process), but they can use the feedback to help identify wider problems, which may result in larger investigations and possible penalties. For example, the regulator is currently investigating Virgin Media over digital phone migrations (here) and problems with service cancellations (here).
In response to this rise in complaints, the comparison site has today published new research that examines customer care in the broadband industry and ranks providers by their quality of customer service, among other things. But it’s worth noting that the results were based on a fairly small survey of 2,662 broadband bill payers – collected from 28th September 2023 – 8th February 2024.
Nevertheless, the top providers for customer service quality were found to be YouFibre (95%), Trooli (94%) and Zen Internet (89%). By comparison, the worst three providers were named as Onestream (48%), Airband (55%) and Shell Energy (58%). In terms of just the biggest four – BT ranked 11th (70%), Sky Broadband tied with BT’s score, TalkTalk ranked 16th (66%) and Virgin Media was way down in 22nd position (59%).
Survey of Customer Service Quality
1. YouFibre (95%)
2. Trooli (94%)
3. Zen Internet (89%)
4. toob (84%)
5. Plusnet (82%)
6. True Speed (81%)
7. Three (79%)
8. Community Fibre (76%)
9. NOW Broadband (71%)
10. Utility Warehouse (70%)
11. BT (70%)
12. Sky (70%)
13. Lit Fibre (69%)
14. Gigaclear (69%)
15. EE (68%)
16. TalkTalk (66%)
17. KCOM (65%)
18. Vodafone (64%)
19. BRSK (64%)
20. Hyperoptic (62%)
21. SSE (62%)
22. Virgin Media (59%)
23. WeFibre (58%)
24. Shell Energy Broadband (58%)
25. Airband (55%)
26. Onestream (48%)