A recent survey conducted by the largest independent consumer advice body – Which has revealed that over half of households in the UK are having regular issues with their broadband.
This survey by Which featured nearly 2000 customers across of the UK including those in England, Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland and found that over 50% of them had issues with their broadband relating to their internet speeds, uptime or rising costs related to broadband.
This Which survey covered all of the major broadband providers including BT – British Telecomm, TalkTalk, Virgin Media & Sky which combined represent nearly 90% of the customers for the UK. This survey also included 8 other smaller providers of internet services to get a clear and accurate picture of the UK’s broadband issues.
These Internet Service Providers were measured for their customer satisfaction related to three major issues which were broadband connections speeds, internet downtime and the amount of money they are paying for their package and each ISP was rated individually on each point.
The ISPs that performed worst in relative to speed was TalkTalk with 31% of its customers surveyed being unhappy with their broadband speeds in the last 12 months. Other providers who performed poorly in the survey were Sky and BT who both had over 20% of their customers surveyed complain about their broadband speeds.
The ISPs that performed worst in relation to internet availability were SSE and Virgin Media. Over 25% of the SSE customers surveyed stated that their internet regularly drops out. Meanwhile Virgin Media customers complained about their router having issues which often left them without internet for hours or even days at a time.
For price rises Virgin Media was also the worst performing ISP with nearly half of their customers surveyed complaining that their package had gone up by too much money. Similarly a large number of complaints were placed for all ISPs including BT, TalkTalk & Sky. This is likely due to the common practise of raising tariffs once the contract has expired.
OFCOM who is the regulator for internet service providers have commented on their issue and agreed with the customers and stated that ISPs have to improve their services they offer to keep customers satisfied. OFCOM have introduced a number of measures to help broadband customers including compensation for customers that have had engineer appointments cancelled which have led to slow repairs or delays in broadband installations which has helped consumer satisfaction. However they share the customers’ views that problems should be solved quicker rather than compensation handed out.
Both Which and OFCOM encourage customers to do what they can to improve their broadband experience including proper maintenance of their equipment along with shopping around for better deals. Customers who are unhappy with their broadband should contact other providers to see what they can offer. We personally recommend that customers contact BT first as they are the largest telecommunications provider in the UK and have very flexible plans. You can call 08700 420392 to get in touch with BT, this is their general enquires number. Alternative you can find other numbers for BT on the FindMyNumbers Website such as the bt sales phone number 0800 alongside other phone numbers and contact details for the other major ISPs.