Orange has paid the price for withdrawing a free broadband offer for mobile users by soaring to the top of Ofcom’s ISP complaints figures.
Orange had been offering free home broadband for mobile customers, but pulled the deal at the end of the summer.
According to a spokesperson at Ofcom, “the spike in complaints came at around the same time as the company withdrew its free broadband offer, which reflects how customers felt about the changes”.
Although customers could still get free broadband, they had to take line rental from the company as well. The company has offered to cover the costs of switching rental providers in response to customer criticism.
According to the Ofcom figures, Orange had a customer complaint rate of 0.5 complaints per 1,000 customers – a significant increase from 0.29 three months earlier.
Orange’s woes were good news for TalkTalk, which fell off the top of the complaints list for the first time in two years. The company was still the second most complained about ISP, with 0.35 per 1,000 customers, down from 0.42 complaints in the three months to August.
Although the overall number of complaints across all ISPs remained steady, BT saw an increase in customers disgruntled enough to contact Ofcom and was above the industry average of 0.24 complaints per 1,000, with 0.34 angry customers per 1,000.
The two companies with the lowest number of complaints were Sky and Virgin Media, with only 0.09 and 0.12 complains per 1,000 users respectively.
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