A survey has revealed that Britain's largest mobile phone operators offer poorer customer and technical support than their smaller rivals despite being more expensive. Vodafone was rated the worst-performing network, with almost one in five customers critical of the way it handled complaints or responded to queries. The survey conducted on 6,135 members of the consumer group also revealed that EE and O2 too fared poorly. It found that 18 per cent of Vodafone customers thought it gave poor customer service, while 13 per cent said its technical support was weak and 19 per cent thought it offered poor value for money.
The UK's largest mobile network, EE, was judged poor value for money by 13 per cent of its customers and only 27 per cent awarded it a good or excellent rating for technical support. O2 was viewed as offering poor value for money by 10 per cent. The operator Three achieved the highest customer score among the largest networks, the fourth consecutive year it did so. Natalie Hitchins, head of home products at Which, said, “The continuing reign of smaller networks over the big players goes to show exactly how important customer support and value for money are to mobile users.” She added, “If you think you are paying too much or are not getting the level of service you expect from your provider you should shop around for a better deal, you might find you save yourself some money and probably a lot of grief too.”
Meanwhile, a Vodafone spokesman said, “We are sorry that members aren't as happy as they could be with our service and are working hard to understand the issue and what more we can do.” An EE spokeswoman said, “We're ranked top by OpenSignal for mobile experience in the UK, which is supported by other independent reports from Ofcom and RootMetrics. Ofcom's latest figures also show that EE receives among the fewest complaints in the mobile industry, as we've continued to invest in the UK's best customer service.”
