TV complaints on the rise
OTTAWA – Canadians had more complaints about their television services than about their telecom and Internet services combined, says the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS).
In its mid-year report released Wednesday, CCTS said it accepted 4,562 complaints between August 1, 2015 and January 31, 2016, down slightly from the 5,468 complaints received in the same period a year earlier. While the number of telecom complaints remained steady, CCTS said that it recorded over 4,650 consumer issues related to television services in the first six months of 2015-16, as compared to 7,294 in all of 2014-15. And that’s more than a year before CCTS can officially accept TV consumer complaints. However, since it is not yet officially accepting complaints, the report is silent on the types of TV complaints.
CCTS commissioner and CEO Howard Maker said that this trend highlights increasing consumer demand for the addition of television service complaints to CCTS’ mandate.
“This will allow us to address the demand that exists among consumers for independent handling of their complaints about billing, service delivery, and contractual issues related to their TV services,” said Maker in the report’s news release. “Given that many Canadians receive their television and telecom services from the same service provider, often bundled together, it makes sense for them to be able to bring all of their complaints about those services to the same organization.”
The report says that non-disclosure or misleading information about contract terms was the most commonly raised issue (12.3% of all issues), followed by complaints about incorrect charges at 10.2% and intermittent/inadequate quality of service at 7.2% of all issues.
CCTS also reported 120 confirmed breaches of the Wireless Code (down more than half from the 328 confirmed breaches last year), and 13 confirmed breaches of the Deposit and Disconnection Code by service providers.
Bell once again topped the list of the 124 service providers about which the CCTS received complaints in the six month period with 1,677 (36.8% of all accepted complaints), followed by Rogers with 437 complaints (9.6%). Wind Mobile remained in third spot with 341 (7.5%), followed by Telus with 310 (6.8%) and Bell flanker brand Virgin Mobile with 257 (5.6%).
Rogers surpassed Telus as the best performer of the ‘Big Three’ after seeing its complaints plunge 65% in the first half of this year versus the same period last year, while it’s flanker brand Fido saw its complaints drop by 22%. Rogers credited its 'Roam Like Home' offering for the drop in customer complaints, saying that its roaming complaints are on track to decrease by 90% this year, from the 2012-13 CCTS results.
"Today's mid-year results show we're continuing in the right direction towards overhauling our customers' experience," said Rogers’ chief customer officer Deepak Khandelwal, in a company press release. "While there is still work to be done, we've started tackling some of the industry's biggest issues head on, like roaming, by introducing services that are easy to use and save customers' time."
In the report’s release, Maker praised Rogers for its efforts to step up its customer service. “We applaud Rogers for the time and effort it has invested in working with CCTS to reduce the number of customer interactions that require recourse to CCTS, thus improving the customer experience for its subscribers. We encourage all of our Participating Service Providers to make similar efforts.”
The report also said that CCTS resolved 90.6% of complaints during the period to the satisfaction of both the customer and the service provider.
