Spike in complaints causing delays at CCTS, mid-year report outlines

Complaints by Canadians about their telecom services increased so much in the second half of 2017 that the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) is experiencing delays in handling some of the files as a result of the increased workload. Between August 2017 and January 2018, the CCTS accepted 6,849 complaints, a 73 per cent increase from the 3,995 it accepted during the same time period last year, it outlined in its latest mid-year report Tuesday. CCTS commissioner Howard Maker said in a phone interview that the increase was likely due to a combination of factors, including what providers are doing, customer awareness, “and how much angst they’re feeling about problems they’re having specifically.” In a press release Tuesday, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) said the increase was significant enough that it must be investigated by the CRTC. "Canadian consumers are sending a clear message that they are being poorly treated by, and are suffering from misleading sales practices of, Internet, wireless, home phone and subscription TV services," PIAC executive director John Lawford said in the release. The time period the report covers coincided with some high-profile news stories about misleading sales practices at Canadian telecoms. In February, the CRTC rejected a call by PIAC to investigate the issue. Lawford said that part of the reason for the increase "is consumers hearing about poor sales practices who in turn complain; however, the base of this problem is likely those practices themselves" and said the CRTC should launch inquiry into the issue. Maker noted that the CCTS was mentioned in some of the news stories about misleading practices, and “anytime we work with the media to help give some insight into what we’re seeing in the marketplace, and we get mentioned, we hope that helps move the needle a little bit, and when people have difficulty that they want to have looked into that they’re aware of us and it’s easy to find us.” While the increase outlined in the report included complaints about TV service for the first time, those accounted for only 846 of the total. TV service became part of the CCTS mandate in September 2017. A significant reason that number is low compared to other services is that the CCTS can only look at complaints about issues that happened after Sept. 1, 2017, Maker confirmed, adding he expects TV complaints to grow, though not as high as complaints about other services. That’s because TV service is less complex than, for example, wireless, and “the requirements of the TV Service Provider Code on TV providers are … less onerous than Wireless Code requirements on wireless service providers,” he said. Maker said that while the CCTS was expecting an increase in total complaints as a result of TV being added to its mandate, it didn’t predict the extent of the uptick it saw or for it to happen so quickly. “We are behind on processing some complaints,” he said, adding the agency experienced challenges getting qualified staff “in quickly enough to cope with what turned out to be a spike of complaints timed right around the beginning of our fiscal year.” Overall, the CCTS resolved 90.4 per cent of the complaints, up slightly from the 89.9 per cent it resolved in last year’s mid-year report. BCE Inc. continued to account for the largest slice of complaints, again making up just under a third of the total, this time with 2,275 complaints. Bell’s Virgin Mobile wireless flanker brand accounted for another 429 complaints. Bell was followed by Rogers Communications Inc. in second place, whose 707 complaints made up 10.3 per cent of the total, and Telus Corp. in third, with 511, or 7.5 per cent of complaints. Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron had the fifth-highest number of complaints accepted, at 368, or 5.4 per cent of the total. Shaw Communications Inc. was in 11th place, with 118 complaints, while its wireless division, Freedom Mobile, had 296 complaints, which put it in seventh place. Across all services — wireless, TV, landline phone and internet — the complaints that were accepted centred largely on the same problems as in previous years. Non-disclosure of terms or misleading information about terms was again the most-raised issue, with incorrect charges coming in second and intermittent or inadequate quality of service in third. When it came to the complaints that the CCTS didn’t accept because they were outside its mandate, most, or 26.9 per cent, were about customer service issues such as wait times and rude customer service representatives. That was followed by complaints about general operating practices and policies, such as the content of plans, packages and fair use policies, at 18.1 per cent. Breaches of rules governing services were down. The report said there were 43 confirmed breaches of the Wireless Code, fewer than the 52 reported in the second half of the year prior, and still down significantly from the 120 from that period the year before that. There were two confirmed breaches of the Deposit and Disconnection Code, down from seven last year. There were no confirmed breaches of the Television Service Provider Code, the report said. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

Spike in complaints causing delays at CCTS, mid-year report outlines

Broadcast | April 10, 2018

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Spike in complaints causing delays at CCTS, mid-year report outlines

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