(Ottawa) Complaints from Canadian consumers of telecommunications or television services decreased by 26% between the 1er August 2021 and January 31, 2022, compared to the same period a year earlier, a new report from the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) revealed on Monday.
Posted at 4:46 p.m.
The agency, which was set up to handle and resolve complaints related to these services, said it received 6,682 new complaints during the reporting period.
Disclosure and billing issues were the biggest issues across services and platforms, the report said. The CCTS counted 2,070 disclosure complaints filed in the six months, in which a “contract in conflict with the agreement” was the most frequently cited issue.
“We continue to observe problems caused by the fact that service providers do not disclose certain important information to their customers when they subscribe to a new telephone, Internet or television service,” said the commissioner and CCTS Executive Director Howard Maker in a news release.
The second highest number of complaints concerned billing, with 2,061 complaints of incorrect charges, according to the report.
Wireless users raised the most issues, followed by Internet, TV and landline customers. Almost half of the complaints came from wireless users.
These wireless complaints raised 7,683 issues and 24 confirmed violations of the industry code of conduct. The most common violation of the wireless code of conduct involved service providers failing to provide the required notice to customers before disconnecting them, or that the notice in question did not contain all of the relevant information.
Bell recorded the highest number of customer complaints at 1,182, which accounted for 17.7% of total complaints. The number of reported issues targeting the telecommunications giant, however, fell by 36.1%. Complaints against Rogers fell 16.5% to 1,003, while complaints from Telus fell nearly 17% to 535. Fido, a brand of Rogers, received 753 complaints, while Virgin Mobile and Virgin Plus, from Bell, received 511. Koodo, owned by Tel, received 383 complaints. Shaw Communications received 327 complaints, while Freedom Mobile, which it owns, received 434.
The report looked at 422 service providers and brands, including 14 who were there for the first time.
Nearly nine out of 10 complaints have been resolved, usually within 30 days, the CCTS said.
“If a customer complains to us that there is a problem with their invoice, for example, and we review it and determine that they are right, we make sure that the problem is resolved,” said explained Mr. Maker during an interview.
The CCTS received no complaints regarding 270 of the participating service providers.