Ofcom flags up complaints

Whether or not Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone, one thing which is not in dispute is that we now rely on the phone so much that when it goes wrong we feel as though part of our lives have been taken away. With that in mind, it was surprising to see the recent announcement by Ofcom that in 2009 approximately 3 million complaints by telephone and broadband users were still outstanding after 12 weeks.

What is perhaps more surprising is that 77% of complainants did not know that they could have approached one of two free resolutions services which could help them to resolve their complaints.

The two complaint resolution services are CISAS and Otelo. The communication and internet service adjudication scheme (CISAS) was set up in 2003 as an independent dispute resolutions service for individuals and small businesses with less than ten employees. Otelo is the office of the telecommunications ombudsman. It deals with complaints in respect of some 300 land line, mobile phone and internet service providers. Like CISAS, Otelo is designed to handle complaints from residential and small business customers.

Both bodies have websites which set out the rules and procedures required for making a complaint and both allow you to send your complaint electronically. The main rule for prospective complainants is that your complaint has to have been with your provider for eight weeks before being passed to the resolution service.

In response to the survey, Ofcom have brought in a new code of practice for handling complaints. This goes live on 22 January 2011. It sets out the process for communications companies to follow when handling complaints and also gives Ofcom powers to take enforcement action against companies who breach the code of practice. A further enhancement which goes live on 22 July 2011 means that information about alternative dispute resolution procedures (ADR) have to be shown on bills and companies will have to write to clients when a complaint reaches the eight week mark and remind them of their ADR rights.

With this announcement about dispute resolution coming hard on the heels of the Ofcom decision to make it easier and cheaper for customers to cancel existing contracts, we can expect to see more clients voting with their feet and changing to providers who care about their customers. Callagenix are proud to offer their clients a service which focuses on excellence. With 24 hour monitoring of our client’s telephone services and our technical team leaping into action as soon as a fault has been identified, we are confident that our client’s won’t be part of the 3 million with outstanding complaints.