OTTAWA – Wireless services once again topped the list of complaints made to Canada's Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) for the fifth straight year, according to its 2012-2013 Annual Report ‘When You Need Help’ released Wednesday.
The CCTS handled 14,036 customer complaints in 2012-2013, well up from 10,678 in the previous year, which is not surprising as more and more Canadians ditch feature phones for rich smartphones. Wireless services complaints comprised 60.4% of all complaints, followed by 19.5% for Internet access, 16.4% for local telephone service and 3.7% for long distance.
Billing errors made up half (50.9%) of the most common issues, followed by contract disputes (25.0%), service delivery (including installation, repair and maintenance) at 20.2% and credit management at 3.9%. Wireless roaming issues increased by over 240% compared to 2011-2012, and consumer concerns about credit reporting by telecommunications providers increased by almost 165%.
Although the volume of complaints increased, CCTS Commissioner Howard Maker said that “the industry is listening”.
"For a number of years we have asked the wireless industry to more proactively address customer problems with premium text messages”, he said in the report’s news release. “We are very pleased to see a 98% decrease in the number of times this issue was raised with CCTS by consumers."
Bell Canada topped the list of the 25 service providers about which the CCTS received the most complaints in 2012-13 with 3,912. Rogers was second with 3,803 and Telus was by far the best performer of the big three, logging 883 complaints (note that these totals do not include each company’s flanker brands). Telus, the only company to see a decline in the number of complaints, was quick to capitalize on that bit of news, saying in a press release: "This is the second consecutive year Telus has experienced a substantial decline in the number of complaints submitted, as Telus’ complaints received by the CCTS decreased by 27 per cent year-over-year. This decline was particularly impressive given the telecommunications industry as a whole experienced an increase year-over-year of 26 per cent in total complaints."
The report again urged the industry to take greater steps to instill consumer confidence in the metering and billing of data, roaming and bandwidth charges. "This is a growing area of complaints with possible costly consequences for customers," added Maker.
Bay Street telecom analyst Dvai Ghose added in a note to investors that there were "surprisingly few complaints at Videotron Wireless – Only 96 per 1 million connections, almost as low as Telus. While Videotron only had 451,100 wireless subscribers at the end of Q2/13, the complaints have been pro-rated per million connections for apples to apples comparisons with the incumbents," he wrote.
"Wind has a big problem," added Ghose. "It had a staggering 1,179 complaints per 1 million connections… While it only had 636,827 subscribers at the end of Q3/13, as with Videotron, the complaints have been prorated on a per million customer connections basis for apples to apples comparisons. Its consistently weak net subscriber additions (only 16,376 in Q3/13) are clearly in part due to high churn and customer dissatisfaction."
The CCTS is responsible for assisting customers and telecommunications carriers resolve a wide range of complaints about products and services including home phone, long distance services, wireless services, wired and wireless Internet access, white page directories, directory assistance, and operator services.
Now in the sixth year of its mandate, the number of participating service providers has topped 240.
