You don't need me to tell you how frustrating it is when the internet grinds to a halt. It's happened to us all at some point and usually when were booking holiday tickets, slaying a dragon or streaming a film. With a new internet provider popping up every few days it's hard to know which one to choose. Here's some help with that, don't choose Talk Talk. Or at least that's what Ofcom's latest study would suggest.
Between October 2010 and February 2011, 1.78 out of every thousand TalkTalk customers complained to Ofcom about the company’s landline services. The second-worst figure was for Sky customers, with just 0.41 out of every thousand, whilst Virgin Media had the lowest level of complaints at 0.21 per thousand customers. With broadband TalkTalk also had the highest level of complaints, at 1.27 complaints per thousand customers. BT was next at 0.61 per thousand, while Virgin Media again had the lowest level at 0.2 complaints per thousand customers.
To be fair to TalkTalk they were moving over from Tiscali in the period in question and in response to the Ofcom study said that it had “grown rapidly “, but “not all customers received the service they deserved as we completed the complex task of moving to our network and a new billing platform.”
"We’re sorry for the disruption caused and, while it’s encouraging to see the number of complaints decreasing towards the end of this period, we continue to work tirelessly to improve." They said
It was a bit unfair of Ofcom to track complaints during a period of change and thus the figures are a little warped but studies like this are very important in controlling the quality of internet services. Sometimes people are less willing to complain for services such as the internet in comparison to physical consumer goods. But we pay good money for the World Wide Web so we deserve it fast and efficient.