'Free' broadband proves unsatisfactory

News

Scott Bicheno Jul 4 2007, 3:15pm

A USwitch survey puts Orange and TalkTalk bottom for customer service

Broadband companies may be ‘talking the talk’, but have yet to ‘walk the walk’, according to the latest home phone and broadband Customer Satisfaction Report, announced by uSwitch.com.

The UK’s most comprehensive report into customer satisfaction, based on responses from nearly 9,000 home phone and nearly 11,000 broadband customers shows that, despite promises from companies that things are on the up, customers have yet to see any signs of improvement.

In fact, while home phone customer satisfaction is up by 4 per cent, broadband satisfaction has continued to plummet and for the first time, a quarter of customers are not satisfied with their broadband provider.

Plusnet, having experienced a severe drop of 16 per cent last year following a raft of service issues, has sprung back to take top position in the broadband survey, with a 78 per cent satisfaction level.

Orange and TalkTalk, together owning 14 per cent of the market with over 2
million customers, have failed to pull themselves out of the bottom two spots in the league.

Orange comes last for the second time running with just 65% of customers satisfied, having seen its satisfaction rating drop 18 per cent over the last 14 months - uncannily around the same time that it launched ‘free’ broadband.

Meanwhile, TalkTalk has yet to reap the rewards of its £15 million investment into customer service. Just 69 per cent of its customers are satisfied. The performance of both companies suggests tha ‘free’ does not necessarily ensure happiness, as the customers paying fo their broadband appear to be happier than the ones who are not.