Which? Calls On ISPs To Deliver Advertised Speeds And Better Customer Service

Consumer group Which? has called for ISPs to provide their customers with the speeds and services that are being paid for, after new research revealed that 63 percent of people have experienced problems with their broadband service.

According to the survey, 45 percent of respondents said they suffered from slow download speeds, while many complained about poor customer service, with a quarter of people who contacted their ISP dissatisfied with the length of time it took to get a connection issue fixed.

Around 27 percent said they had to wait for two days to get a resolution, while 22 percent did not have Internet for a week or more. A third said they didn’t get a resolution at all, while one in five said they had to contact their ISP at least three times to get a problem, fixed.

Broadband campaign

“The internet is an essential part of modern life, yet millions of us are getting frustratingly slow speeds and having to wait days to get reconnected when things go wrong,” said Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which? “It’s less superfast broadband, more super slow service from companies who are expecting people to pay for speeds they may never get. Broadband providers need to give customers the right information and take responsibility for resolving problems.”

Which? has launched a campaign called ‘Give Us Broadband Speed Guaranteed’ and is calling on the public to support it by signing a petition on the group’s website.

The campaign demands that ISPs give customers an accurate speed estimate at the start of a contact and allow them to exit the agreement without penalty if they don’t receive these estimates at any point during the contract. It also wants broadband firms to fix problems as quickly as possible and refund people for loss of service, while taking responsibility for resolving connection issues.

ISPs react

Virgin Media has lent its support to the campaign, stating that it has been calling for greater transparency over broadband speeds for some time and that it consistently delivers the speeds it advertised and, in some cases, even faster than that.

“With the fastest broadband speeds and the highest customer satisfaction according to Ofcom, we welcome Which? joining our long-standing call for greater transparency,” said Joe Lathan, director of broadband at Virgin Media. “We know how important broadband is to people which is why we continue to boost speeds for our customers.”

BT however said it already supports many of the proposals that Which? is putting forward and contested claims that many UK Internet users suffer from slow speeds.

“We give personalised broadband speed estimates to all customers at the point of sale and this is now underwritten by the industry Code of Practice,” a spokesperson told TechWeekEurope. “No BT customer should be in any doubt as to the likely speed that they should expect from our service – before they make a purchase decision. If a customer consistently gets lower speeds than we estimated, then we try to improve that speed for them and in cases where we fail, then the customer can cancel the service without paying charges.

“The suggestion from Which? that UK customers are in the broadband slow lane does not fit with Ofcom’s recent European Broadband Scorecard report that found home broadband speeds in the UK have doubled in the last year to an average of almost 18Mbps, ahead of Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

“As regards faults, BT takes customer service very seriously and manage to correct even complex faults within an average of three days. However, we apologise where customers have had to wait longer.”

Two of the UK’s other major ISPs, Sky and TalkTalk, had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication

In January, communications watchdog Ofcom pledged to continue to protect consumer interests, claiming that strong competition has brought the price of broadband down over the last ten years, while customers have received new services such as fibre.

It said consumer satisfaction is generally high but that it would work to ensure landline and broadband installations and faults are repaired quickly by BT Openreach, which manages the UK’s copper network, while it also wants to make it easier to switch providers and to protect users against mid-contract price rises.

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