Virgin Media was the most complained-about provider in the UK across the broadband, landline and pay-TV categories, seeing significant rises across all these areas from the previous quarter.
Publishing figures for the period between July and September last year, communications regulator Ofcom said the figures included a slight rise in the number of complaints received.
Complaints about landline, broadband and pay-TV services all increased, while mobile complaints remained at similar levels.
Ofcom admitted that its investigation into customers’ difficulties cancelling contracts and how it had handled complaints could have been a contributing factor in its complaints volumes for the quarter covered by this report.
Commenting on the overall complaints data for this quarter, Fergal Farragher, Ofcom’s Consumer Protection Director, said: “We acknowledge the impact of our investigation on Virgin Media’s complaints figures for this quarter, but are also aware that our investigation was in part based on complaints that customers had already made about Virgin Media’s services. We may publish updates on the investigation on our Enforcement Bulletin as the investigation progresses.”
Alongside Virgin, the Sky/Comcast-owned NOW Broadband and TalkTalk received higher-than-average numbers of complaints in landline while NOW Broadband also received higher-than-average complaints in broadband.
Virgin Media was the most complained-about provider across the broadband, landline and pay-TV categories, seeing significant rises across all these areas from the previous quarter.
A Virgin Media O2 spokesperson said: “Our number one priority is to provide an excellent service to our customers, and we accept that the rise in complaints in the third quarter falls far short of our expectations.
“As Ofcom acknowledges, the rise is largely due to its investigation announcement in July which subsequently generated a higher number of complaints than would ordinarily be expected. However, it should be noted that overall complaints about Virgin Media and O2 products still represent a very small proportion of our customer base.”
Sky itself continued to be the provider that attracted the fewest or joint fewest complaints per 100,000 subscribers across all four services measured by Ofcom. This includes being the outright least complained-about provider in both broadband and landline.
TalkTalk and Sky were the least complained-about pay-TV providers, while O2 and BT Mobile were the most complained-about mobile operators.
