Vodafone broadband complaints highest in UK after outage

Vodafone Group PLC (LON:VOD) was the UK’s most-complained-about broadband provider over the spring months after an outage hit its network.

Citing faults, service issues and dissatisfaction over network connections, Ofcom revealed on Thursday that customers complained about Vodafone more frequently than rivals over the three months to June.

“We have engaged with Vodafone regarding their performance,” Ofcom said.

“They have been taking steps to identify and address the causes of these complaints and we would expect to see the results of this to show in the coming months.”

Some 24 complaints were received about Vodafone’s broadband service per 100,000 customers over the period, the regulator said.

This was up from 17 complaints made per 100,000 Vodafone customers over the three months to March.

Vodafone attributed the flurry of additional complaints to an outage suffered across its network at the time, adding the figure was not reflective of its typical performance.

“We’re committed to great customer service and our customer complaints are at the lowest they have been for over five years, so we’re disappointed to see where we’ve placed in this quarter’s report,” a spokesperson said.

“The complaints cover a period from April to June 2023, and many of them reflect an outage we unfortunately experienced at the time.

“This is not reflective of the usual number of complaints we typically receive, and we expect this to be reflected in next quarter’s results.”

Vodafone’s complaint figures compared to 18, 15 and 13 per 100,000 TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Shell (LON:RDSa) Energy (LON:SHEL) customers respectively.

BT Group PLC (LON:BT) also faced 13 complaints per 100,000 people, while Plusnet, EE and Sky customers reported the fewest issues.

“Complaints are still slightly higher than they were in 2022,” Ofcom added, “this shows that providers still have work to do in improving customers’ experiences”.

Vodafone shares fell 1.2% to 76.78p.