Consumer protection – Ofcom Reports

It is to be noted that protection of consumer’s interest is one of the basic objectives of Ofcom. In this section, the types of complaints that the consumers are making to the regulator and their concern relating to the communications industry are discussed. The findings are analysed by age, gender and socio-economic group. This demographic analysis help Ofcom to find out whether there is any likelihood of any specific group experiencing particular problems or any group less aware of complaints procedures.

In this chapter, consumer protection is measured by three metrics namely consumer complaints about communications services, personal experience of issues in each communications market and awareness and use of complaints procedures.

The data discussed and presented in this chapter are based on all households/adults in the UK.

Consumer complaints about communications services
In the telecommunications regulator’s organization there is a special wing called Consumer Contact Team (CCT). As far as the consumers are concerned, CCT is a point of contact where consumers can make enquiries and make complaints regarding their grievances pertaining to the telecoms and communications market. Ofcom handles only a portion of the complaints relating to communications services. At the same time it gets a general idea to the extent of certain issues. Data shows that monthly average of complaints against telecoms services has decreased in 2011 when compared to the number of complaints received in 2010. In 2011, between January and February, there was a sharp increase in the level of complaints against silent calls but then it started decreasing. Since November 2010, there is a steady decrease in the complaints about early termination charges. There were 633 broadcasting complaints in September 2011 out of which 590 were about television and the rest about radio broadcasting. Radio broadcasting remained the least complained throughout the past year.

In the telecommunications market, customer service issues, fixed-line mis-selling and silent calls were the main issues in the complaints. The term ‘mis-selling’ covers a wide range of sales and marketing activities which are detrimental to the interest of consumers and competition. Using pressure to change provider, using threatening, giving false information etc come under ‘mis-selling. There is a slight increase in mis-selling complaints in the mobile market over the year, last September the number of mis-selling complaints was 190 whereas it was 230 in September 2011. The number of complaints about ‘silent calls’ received in the year 2011 is higher than what was received in 2010. A silent call is a kind of deserted call where the individual who is called hears nothing on attending the phone and has no ways of finding out whether any person is there at the other end. Complaints about ‘additional charges’ have significantly declined over the years. At present per month CCT receives just over 200 complaints relating to additional charges and ETC (early termination charges) is the cause for majority of these complaints.

There were two obstacles for the customers to over come if they want to switch their internet supplier. In order to change internet supplier, the consumer has to produce MAC (migration authorization code) before the new supplier. Only when MAC is produced the service would be transferred from the existing service line. The second difficulty was with regard to the ‘tag’. To establish the fact that a particular broadband supplier is the provider of communications services to a particular household, broadband suppliers put an ‘electronic tag’ on the telephone line. Before the new supplier begins service, this tag should be removed. Thanks to the strong intervention of the regulator these barriers were removed and the number of complaints about broadband migration has been decreasing since 2007.

Over the past year volumes of complaints about phonepayPlus have decreased and in April 2011, there were only 300+ complaints about PRS and majority of complaints were about the mobile market. For the regulating all premium rate charged telecommunications services and for day-to-day regulation of the content and promotion of services, PhonepayPlus was appointed by Ofcom as an agency.

Personal experience of issues in each communications market
To find out the number of GB adults who have personal experience about particular issues in each of the communications markets during the past six months, the regulator conducted a consumer research. Whether consumers have made a complaint about the issue or not is not taken into consideration. Relating to each of the communications market, a list of issues were read out to the consumers and were asked whether they had experienced any issue during the past six months. Respondents had to be consumers in each specific market to be asked these questions.

In the fixed line market only 23% of GB adults said that they had personally experienced silent calls during the last six months. As per the data collected the proportion of complaints received is lower than the proportion of consumers personally experienced silent calls. Many of them did not file complaints. The research however shows a decline in the proportions experiencing silent calls. In the past six months, on their fixed line at home, 24% of surveyed personally received abandoned calls. There is a steady decline in abandoned calls since 2009. When asked, whether the consumers received an unexpectedly high fixed-line bill, 3% of respondents said they had received high fixed-line bills in the past six months. With regard to abandoned calls on a mobile phone, personal experience has declined during the past year from 10% to 4%. In the past six months 17% of GB adults had experienced poor TV reception. During the same period, personal experience of poor radio reception is remarkably lower than TV. When consumers were asked about some general problems that they had experienced during the last six months, some GB adults said that they had experienced difficulties in resolving some issue with their providers.

Use of complaints procedures
Here we consider the proportion of GB adults who had a reason to make a complaint and whether they have proceeded with the complaint. In the past 12 months, overall, 23% of the UK adults have had reason to complain against communications services. Due to network problems, fixed lines became the most frequent target of complaint (10%) Fixed broadband and contract mobile phone comes next with 7% and only 2% of adults have complaints about mobile broadband or pre-pay mobile phone. The least complained about is TV rating only 1%. During the last 12 months even though they have had reasons to file complaints, 42% of fixed line, 22% of internet and 43% of mobile contract consumers chose not to proceed with their complaints.