By Gemma Simpson, 3 July 2007 00:01
NEWS
Customers have voted Orange and TalkTalk the worst UK broadband providers for customer service, according to an annual survey of more than 10,500 UK residents.
Consumers placed 'free' broadband provider Orange at the bottom of the rankings as more than one-third (35 per cent) of its customers said they were not satisfied with their broadband service.
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Fellow 'free' fat-pipe provider TalkTalk, from the Carphone Warehouse, was not far behind - with 31 per cent of its customers dissatisfied with its service despite its overhauling of its customer service operations in a deal with CRM vendor NetSuite last year.
Customer service satisfaction also fell three per cent across the board since October 2006, with a quarter of customers with top broadband providers dissatisfied with their broadband provider, the uSwitch.com survey reveals.
Chris Frost, communications expert at uSwitch.com, said new advances in broadband technology appear to be having an adverse effect, with connection problems and service interruptions occurring all too frequently and customers having to make numerous phone calls to get problems fixed.
In response to the uSwitch survey, an Orange spokesman said in a statement: "We acknowledge the findings of this survey but moreover listen to our customers and as a result, are aware that some of them have experienced service and technical issues over the past few months."
"We would like to reassure them that we work as effectively as possible to resolve their complaints. We also apologise to those customers who have experienced problems."
The spokesman added: "We are taking steps to improve our network capacity and customer services, including investing heavily in our teams and will continue to do so... Our focus is on getting things right for our customers and we shall continue working to improve the levels of service we offer."
Plusnet topped the broadband rankings, with more than three-quarters (78 per cent) of customers satisfied with its services, followed by AOL, Sky and Virgin Media with 76 per cent customer satisfaction rates apiece.
This is the first time the uSwitch.com survey has interviewed broadband customers from both Sky and Virgin Media.
Frost added: "Despite the on-going spat between the two providers, both claiming to offer a better deal than the other, the results astonishingly show the two media giants coming neck-and-neck with a score of 76 per cent, placing them in second place alongside AOL."
TalkTalk was not available for comment at the time of publication.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Mark Brett
I have had an Orange CSR change my broadband login details. I sent 3 emails to the exec office and had delivery reports back but they did nothing. I only managed to get to talk to some one high up in the CAT department when I sent an e-mail to a person who is very high in the ranks. he got a person to ring me who is head of the cat team in the Leeds call centre. He said he would look in to this and so I called him a month later only to be told that they are unable to trace who changed my pass word.
2. Roger Huffadine
I've been a communications and computer expert for 40 years and have never seen such a mish mash of POOR customer service as that which surrounds broadband. Two weeks ago I spent over 8 hours unravelling the mess left behind after a friend had complied with the instructions from the Orange technical help desk. The 'lineone' box had no configuration and Windows had, eventually, to be re-installed. I spend around 4 hours a week on support for friends and friends of friends. If I charged I could make a small fortune.
3. Simon
"... new advances in broadband technology appear to be having an adverse effect ..."
No, it's not the advances in technology, it's the plain greed and incompetence of the vendors.
Simple facts are that most 'speed' problems are caused by the vendors being too tight ar**d to buy the bandwidth needed to service the customers - in other words, they are selling more than they've got and hoping that people won't notice.
Of course, that comes on top of all the stupid hype where all the products are sold on some theoretical but not achievable speed - very, very few get anything even remotely close to 8M on their 'up to 8M' lines.
So My Public gets his "8M line" and finds that he can't ever get better than 4M (ADSL limits), and most of the time when he wants to use it he can't get even 1M (cheapskate ISPs bandwidth problem) - is it any wonder that people are not happy ?
And of course, if this weren't enough, we get this clamour to be the cheapest - instead of the best. So anyone that goes with free and expects anything but nothing deserves all they get and the idiots selling them disappointment deserve to be put against the wall when the revolution comes ! Anyone with 2 brain cells knows that it costs money to provide a service, need I say more ?
4. Sue Stockdale
Talk Talk are also the pits! My service was supposed to be offline for 4 hours for "exchange upgrade". It was actually off for TWO MONTHS, landline included. At the end of this time I moved house, followed the normal procedures for cancelling service, only to find myself pursued for an unpaid bill for the time when I a) had no service to use b) didn't even live at the property and c) when I was trying to claim back standard charges paid for the period with no services. It was only when I actually managed to get the email address for Charles Dunstone that I finally got some action. TOTALLY INCOMPETENT!
5. Ralph
Ah, Simon in Cumbria. How right you are.
Sadly, it seems beyond the comprehension of most that 'buy cheap-buy twice' is almost always the case.
We don't make a lot in this country anymore, we supply services and nothing is for free.
All business are trying to make money. Giving something away doesn't make money.
I've always found a better service comes from stickig with the old national services, gas/electricity/telephone/water are al back where they would have been 25 years ago. It's not without issues but there's always someone at the end of phone line to resolve the problem.
6. Andrew Davies
I connected my daughter to Orange 'free' broadband. Getting connected took four months and multiple phone calls because I did not have the modem they insisted they had sent. Then five modems turned up over the course of two days! To be fair, once I had the kit, set up was quick and easy and the service has been faultless over the subsequent six months. My daughter is not a heavy user, mainly email, chat, some browsing and social networking. I suspect the 'free' services are aimed more at this kind of user. Heavy downloaders and streamers really need to pay to avoid those high contention ratios cutting in.