Vodafone and Virgin Most Complained About Telecoms Providers

Vodafone Home Broadband and Virgin Media are on Ofcom’s naughty list this year, after attracting the most complaints for their service in the second quarter of 2019.

In the fixed line broadband sector, Vodafone most annoyed its subscribers, who registered 30 complaints per 100,000 customers.

Vodafone customers had particular gripes about faults, service and provisioning. Ofcom’s data covers the period between April and June of this year, but Vodafone’s woes continued into the summer, as speeds melted down over two consecutive weekends in late August and early September. Expect to see another poor performance from the ISP when Ofcom releases Q3’s league tables sometime in the new year.

Also rapped for their high volume of complaints were fellow budget provides Plusnet, Q1’s biggest offender, and TalkTalk.

Sky, Post Office and EE attracted the least complaints, weighed for subscriber numbers, for their home broadband services.

Meanwhile, Virgin Mobile was the most griped-about in the mobile sector, with eight complaints submitted to Ofcom per 100,000 customers. Virgin Mobile recently announced it is ditching EE, its mobile network partner for two decades, and will begin using Vodafone’s mobile network from late 2021. However, as most of the complaints received about Virgin Mobile were about handling of complaints (35%) and billing, pricing and charges (26%), as opposed to faults, service and provisioning (16%), the swap won’t improve their performance.

Tesco Mobile was the least complained about mobile provider, as they have been consistently—except for a fluke win by Sky Mobile in the last quarter of 2018—for years.

A Tesco Mobile spokesperson said: “We’re delighted to be named by Ofcom as the UK mobile network to receive the least complaints in its latest report. We’ve consistently been the network with the lowest number of complaints for five years and will continue to provide our customers with market leading customer service.”

Virgin’s woes continued into the Pay TV market, as they overtook TalkTalk and BT to earn the most complaints for their television services. Sky TV was the most liked by its subscribers.

Overall, the total volume of complaints Ofcom received was up on the first quarter of the year. Consumer satisfaction levels were 83% for broadband and 93% for mobile phone services.

Lauren Smith

Lauren Smith has worked as a journalist and copywriter for most of the last decade, covering technology, energy, and consumer rights, in the US and UK.

Read all articles