The number of ISP complaints received by advisory service Consumer Direct was 6,256 between January and June 2009, representing a drop of 16.18 per cent compared with the same period last year.

While a third of complaints registered by the organisation were regarding defective goods, only a quarter concerned poor-quality service levels.

Consumer minister Kevin Brennan said: “We want to empower consumers so that they are confident about their rights when buying goods and services in shops and via the internet.”

Last week, Ofcom urged ISPs to ensure they remain focused on rolling out high-speed broadband services despite the government’s universal service commitment of 2Mb for all by 2012.

The company believes that consumers could save over £230 by choosing the right package, but said that broadband bills had been “overlooked in the rush to cut household costs”.

The website also states that the average speed of broadband connections had increased by 700 percent over the same period.

“This means that any consumer who hasn’t switched broadband deals recently could find that they are on a ‘legacy tariff’ – stuck on an old package, paying more expensive rates for significantly inferior services,” it said.

Michael Phillips of BroadbandChoices said: “Unlike most other household bills, the cost of broadband has decreased while the quality has increased in the last three years. This is because of increased competitiveness within the market and a higher take up rate.

“Suppliers save their most compelling offers for new customers and unfortunately many households continue to pay a legacy tariff. They don’t realise that by switching – or asking for a better deal – they can get a newer, cheaper and faster service. If they bundle their services [with other products such as digital TV] then the savings will be even greater.”

O2 topped the rankings of large ISPs, scoring 79% for customer satisfaction and 72% for reliability.

Orange came bottom pile, with a customer satisfaction score of only 33%. Tiscali, Pipex, AOL and TalkTalk all failed to score above 40%.

Thinkbroadband.com editor, Andrew Ferguson, told PC Pro that he blames the call-centre culture for the appalling customer service scores. “The big call centres have to wait for stuff to trickle up [to technicians] and trickle down again,” he said. “It means it can be a week or more before the solution trickles down to the person on the phone.”
Ferguson also claims that they “stick to the script without fail”, leaving customers frustrated when help desks fail to provide practical solutions to problems.

Small and medium-sized ISPs clocked up, on average, far higher customer service rankings than their larger counterparts, with average customer service scores of more than 60%, compared to 44% for the major ISPs.
To compare customer service rankings of more ISPs, including XLN Telecom, visit Topcomm, an Ofcom initiative.

Related article:

XLN ranks above BT & TalkTalk again

Carphone Warehouse may have to raise prices if Ofcom approves a planned increase of up to 11% next month, followed by a further 22% over the next three years. He predicts that up to 800,000 households could be priced out of the market.

“The industry is gobsmacked by the scale of the increases that have been proposed,” he said.
The increase by BT’s Openreach access division would be the first since 2005. It said it must be allowed to make a return to pay for £1 billion annual network investment.

“Clearly there is scope to increase prices if you have the likes of Carphone giving broadband away for ‘free’,” said BT.
“Our proposals aim to ensure that the market continues to operate in the interests of consumers,” Ofcom said.

The survey also revealed that 44% have a lower level of trust now than they did a year ago, while just 9% had a higher trust of their provider.

Poor service performance (39%) was voted the most likely area to negatively impact consumer trust of an ISP, which was followed someway behind by customer support (19%), sudden/unexpected service changes (16.5%), dishonest advertising (10%) and sudden/unexpected price changes (8%).

“Loss of trust is not something to be taken lightly”, said a spokesperson for ISPreview. “Regaining the support of a disgruntled customer is often far harder than holding on to it in the first place” he continued.

The survey also reveals that 38% of consumers currently have a low level of trust in their ISP, which must surely be a big cause for concern.

According to ISPreview, the results indicate that consumers notice when the service they’ve joined fails to match up with initial expectations, which is often fuelled by unrealistic advertisements.

Unexpected and unwelcome changes to their existing packages can also cause frustration (e.g. price increases or more usage restrictions etc.), as can the inability of an ISP to offer effective customer support.”

The spokesperson said that “customers with a high degree of distrust are obviously far more likely to look elsewhere for an alternative.

“Trust is all about reliability and predictability; it’s important for ISPs to make sure that the service they provide doesn’t fall too far short of expectations and avoids making unexpected negative changes to existing packages. If a provider really must make a change then it should give customers at least one month’s warning, preferably a lot more!”

The warning follows a series of incidents where Pipex has failed to comply with Ofcom rules on switching, which state that all ISPs must provide consumers with the code within 5 days of a request being made.

MAC codes from previous suppliers are required by ISPs to insure a smooth transition. Without this code, consumers could experience a downtime of anywhere between a few
days, to several weeks.

Ofcom has issued Pipex with a notification that “highlights a number of occasions where Pipex failed to abide by these rules and requires them to ensure that they are compliant by the deadline of 23 January 2009″.

“If, following the January deadline, we believe that Pipex has failed to take appropriate steps to comply with the notification we will consider whether further enforcement action is necessary,” Ofcom states.