OTTAWA – While Canadians complained less about their wireless services last year, the number of Internet-related grievances jumped by 52%, the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) said Wednesday in its annual report.
The report, Making The Tough Calls, showed that the CCTS received 9,988 customer complaints in 2014-15, down 12% from 11,340 in 2013-14, and maintained an 87% resolution rate. Wireless services complaints once again topped the list with 52.9% of all complaints, followed by 26.1% for Internet, 18.2% for local telephone service and 2.8% for long distance.
“For the second year in a row, complaints declined somewhat”, wrote Commissioner Howard Maker in the report. “We’re cautiously optimistic that the effectiveness of our process is helping customers and service providers resolve many complaints before they get to us.”
While the proportion of wireless complaints dropped 7% from last year, marking the first time the CCTS has ever recorded such a decline, Internet issues rose 52%. The top three Internet complaints were incorrect charges, non-disclosure of terms/misleading information about terms, and intermittent/inadequate quality of service.
“We’re also concerned about the rise in internet complaints and issues of non-disclosure across all lines of business,” added Maker, in the report’s news release. “We’ll continue to monitor these and other areas, and continue to work with stakeholders to ensure clarity and fairness for telecom consumers.”
Overall, billing errors made up almost half (43.4%) of the most common complaint issues, followed by contract disputes (31.0%), service delivery (including installation, repair and maintenance) at 21.3% and credit management at 4.3%.
At the same time, the number of Wireless Code breaches rose sharply – from 30 in 2013-14 to 582 this year. According to the report, some two-thirds (422) of those breaches related to a single plan offered by Wind Mobile that experienced “some systematic problems.”
Bell Canada again topped the list of the 25 service providers about which the CCTS received the most complaints in 2014-15 with 3,599 or 36% of all complaints. Rogers was second with 1,814 complaints (18.2%) and Telus was by far the best performer of the 'Big Three', logging 466 complaints (4.7%). These totals do not include each company’s flanker brands. Wind Mobile ranked third with 702 complaints (7.0%), Videotron generated 313 complaints (3.1%), and Cogeco had 80 complaints (0.8%).
Telus, which saw its saw its number of complaints drop for a fourth straight year, credited its 28.6% year-over-year reduction to its refined approach to customer service.
“However, we’re not content with simply outperforming our competition; our ultimate goal is to bring our complaints down to zero”, said Telus' consumer and small business solutions president David Fuller, in a news release. “These results show us that we have 466 opportunities to prove to our customers that they can expect more from us, and we’ll be looking at this report, along with the feedback we receive from our customers every day, for opportunities to continuously get better.”
Rogers also issued a press release highlighting its 23.7% decline in complaints, saying a new simple bill layout, enhanced customer offerings and self-serve options have helped it to deliver a better experience for its customers.
"Our focus is on saving people time by making it simple and easy to do business with us," said Rogers' chief customer officer Deepak Khandelwal, in the release. "This work won't be done overnight, but we are committed to radically improving customer service and today's results show we're on the right track."
Bell Canada saw its percentage of complaints dip by 1.4%, while Wind Mobile saw its share rise by 37.6%.
