UK telco regulator Ofcom has published its report on the complaints it received in the first quarter of 2014. The good news is that, compared to broadband and fixed line services, mobile receives relatively few complaints. But within the mobile category EE was the subject of the most complaints per 1000 customers.

Ofcom breaks down mobile telephony complaints into postpaid and prepaid (although it prefers the terms “pay monthly” and “PAYG”) and it notes that approximately 95 per cent of mobile complaints concern postpaid services, so it doesn’t even bother publishing the prepaid data. Having said that it did note that EE has the highest prepaid complaints rate.

On the postpaid side EE is also getting the most complaints, with a rate of 0.04 per 1000 customers/connection per month around double the industry average (see chart). The main sources of customer ire were complaints handling, billing and issues with changing provider.

“We are committed to improving service levels and have plans to return over 1,000 customer service roles to the UK from overseas call centres, the first phase of which will see two new UK call centres open in the next few weeks,” said an EE spokesperson. “We are of course disappointed but will take on board the findings of this latest Ofcom report as we strive to offer our customers the best possible service.”

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Ofcom fields almost 300 complaints per day from disgruntled telco customers and publishes the data in order to help people make more informed decisions when selecting their communications service providers.

“Publishing complaints data is a key part of our work to provide useful comparative information for consumers, and drive improvements in quality of service across the communications sector,” said Claudio Pollack, Director of Ofcom’s consumer group. “The report highlights the performance of providers relative to each other. This is valuable information that consumers may wish to consider alongside other factors such as price and availability, for example, when choosing a provider.”

Monthly Complaints Per 1000 Customers