Rogers customer complaints down by 65%: CCTS

Rogers Communications Inc. experienced a nearly 65-per-cent drop in complaints accepted by the Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS), according to the commissioner's mid-year report. Released Wednesday morning, the report said Rogers was the subject of 437 complaints during the six-month period of Aug. 1, 2015 to Jan. 31, 2016, down from 1,240 complaints during the same period a year earlier. Complaints about Rogers’ Fido brand also fell almost 23 per cent to 237 from 306 complaints over the latter half of 2015. In a press release, Rogers attributed the drop to increased customer service initiatives such as using Facebook Messenger support, and device and account-related apps so customers can ask questions, fix smartphone issues and access data, billing and payment services from their device. "Our employees are what makes the real difference," Deepak Khandelwal, Rogers' chief customer officer, said in the release. "We're continuously investing in tools and training so they're empowered to fix customers' issues the first time." In 2014, Rogers announced a multi-year plan to overhaul its customer service, with CEO Guy Laurence admitting the company had “neglected” customers. The plan included tackling high roaming bills. BCE Inc.'s Bell continued to top the list of complaints about service providers, with 1,677 complaints accepted by the CCTS in the six-month reporting period, a nearly 16 per cent decrease from the same period a year earlier. The higher total number "tends to reflect the fact that Bell has by far the most customers of any communications carrier, and in fact we're also now Canada's fast-growing broadband provider," Bell spokesperson Jacqueline Michelis said in an email. The company is making "steady progress" in service improvements, she said. "We've invested in team training, simplified billing, and new online and mobile service apps." Rogers was second on the list, followed by Shaw Communications Inc.’s Wind Mobile's 341 complaints and Telus Corp.'s 310 complaints. Bell's Virgin Mobile rounded out the top five with 257 complaints. Overall, telecom complaints decreased about 16 per cent from the same period a year earlier, with 4,562 customer complaints accepted. Non-disclosure of terms or misleading information about terms made up about 12 per cent of the issues raised by complainants, followed by problems with incorrect charges. CCTS commissioner Howard Maker said in a phone interview that he would call the overall number of complaints "steady," given that they are actually up a little from the second six-month period of the previous reporting year. However, Maker said he would be hesitant to draw any real conclusions from the numbers. "We respond to what the marketplace brings to us," Maker said. "For example, if one big service provider has a real problem, we could get 500 complaints next week about it. ... So it's really hard to look at the number and say that it necessarily indicates anything in particular because it's not really low, it's not extremely high, it's pretty steady," he said. Also on the decline were breaches of the wireless code, which had shot up dramatically last year. CCTS reported a 63-per-cent decrease in wireless code breaches, down to 120 confirmed breaches compared to the 328 breaches during the same period a year earlier. Taking the lion's share of the code breaches were 54 instances where the service provider "did not give reasonable notice to the customer at least 14 calendar days or/and 24 hours before a disconnections and the notice did not contain all relevant information," the CCTS report said. During the six-month period, the CCTS also fielded complaints about television 4,651 times. As of September 2017, complaints about TV service will become part of the CCTS mandate, as announced by the CRTC earlier this month. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Rogers customer complaints down by 65%: CCTS

News | March 29, 2016

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Rogers customer complaints down by 65%: CCTS

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