Phone, internet complaints remain consistently high

Telecommunications companies are yet to get on top of problems with customer billing, with little change in the number of complaints from year to year.

The Telecommunications Dispute Resolution (TDR) said it received 1925 complaints from consumers in the six months ended December 2023, which was four more than the year earlier.

This is addition to the 1770 complaints received in the first half of 2023 involving phone or internet issue.

TDR board chairperson Barry Jordan said: “Complaint and dispute enquiry volumes are remaining consistently high – these levels seem to be the new normal.

“In these last six months’ alone TDR saw almost as many complaints as we did during the whole of 2020/21.”

Technology Users Association chief executive Craig Young said the industry was not doing enough to address the issues raised time and again by consumers.

“Really disappointed that the numbers continue to stay as high as they are,” he said.

The top three complaint categories involved billing (50.7 percent), customer service (15.6 percent), and faults (12.8 percent).

The main related issues within each of the categories were disputed charges (36.2 percent), failure to action a request (9.3 percent) and delays with service restoration (6 percent).

Jordan said it focused on an early resolution approach.

“It continues to make a big difference with 97 percent of complaints being sorted in our first stage of our involvement.”