Same company, different experience. Customers of Sky sibling NOW Broadband have been complaining to Ofcom in droves this year, as issues with broadband service mount.
- Sky’s own broadband and TV customers least likely to complain to Ofcom
- EE TV draws level with Sky TV, with massive drop in complaints
- Poor service levels continue to blight Virgin Media O2 broadband, pay TV and mobile.
Ofcom’s latest complaints figures show NOW Broadband is struggling to keep customers happy.
A surge of complaints between January and March, mostly about how their complaints were handled by the company, has made NOW Broadband the most complained about Internet Service Provider (ISP).
NOW has been accused by some users for shutting down its customer community forums as a way to hide the levels of discontent from customers.
Virgin Media O2 doesn’t get better…
Meanwhile, Virgin Media O2 continues to perform badly across mobile, broadband and pay TV, with ongoing gripes about how the company is responding and dealing with complaints. Last year, Virgin Media O2 was accused of making it extremely hard for customers to cancel.
Sky’s own-branded broadband and TV service continued to attract far fewer complaints than the industry average.
However, it now must share the title of least complained about pay TV provider with EE TV, which has notably improved its performance. EE TV, formerly BT TV, has had its fair share of complaints. But improvements to its service, new receivers and more customers moving to more reliable fibre broadband services, meaning TV is less like to suffer from buffering, has led to just two complaints to Ofcom per 100,000 customers in the first months of the year.
A reminder that Ofcom actually doesn’t investigate individual complaints. But it does use complaints stats to monitor general performance trends. It will also see if an individual complaint is part of a wider possible breach of consumer protection rules.
If you have a complaint that hasn’t been resolved to your satisfaction, you can escalate it to the Communications Ombudsman.
▶ Stats in detail (Q1 2024)
Broadband
| Provider | Complaints per 100,000 customers (Less is better) |
|---|---|
| Sky🥇 | 6 |
| Shell Energy | 6 |
| Plusnet | 8 |
| BT | 9 |
| TalkTalk | 11 |
| EE | 14 |
| Vodafone | 16 |
| Virgin Media O2 | 18 |
| NOW Broadband 💩 | 22 |
Pay TV
| Provider | Complaints per 100,000 customers (Less is better) |
|---|---|
| Sky 🥇 | 2 |
| EE TV (Previously BT TV) | 2 |
| TalkTalk | 3 |
| Virgin Media O2 💩 | 11 |
Mobile (pay monthly)
| Provider | Complaints per 100,000 customers (Less is better) |
|---|---|
| Tesco Mobile 🥇 | 1 |
| Sky Mobile | 2 |
| EE | 2 |
| Vodafone | 2 |
| iD Mobile | 4 |
| Three | 4 |
| Virgin Media O2 💩 | 8 |
Source: Ofcom
By: Marc Thornham | Image: NOW Promo