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Competition is high amongst broadband suppliers and they are all offering cheap, fast and easy broadband services to 13 million homes in the UK. But is it such a great deal? It has been reported that speeds are not as fast as they claim and support charges could cost you more money than you expected. These cheap competitive deals don't seem quite so amazing when you take into account all the added costs and the actual service you are receiving. It has been reported that less than half the broadband customers in the UK are satisfied with their Broadband service. Many others report that expectations are not being met. Most common problems with broadband are: connection, set up, wireless router, speed and service interruptions. For these problems to be sorted out, a customer service helpline is provided, but at a peak rate. A call has to be made to sort out the problem on the line or arrange for an engineer to come to look at the computer. Reports suggest that the average broadband consumer calls 4 times a year and the main problem is network connection. Only 40% of consumers get the problem sorted in just one call, many others say it take three calls to sort out one problem. Most calls take around 17 minutes and 6 of these minutes are on hold. These support calls are costing customers a lot of money and the broadband providers are reaping in the profits. These extra costs are costing customers up to twice as much a year for their broadband service. Call charges for support line costs an average of 11p per minutes depending on the company. Talk Talk provide a free service but is one of the smaller providers. Orange support calls are a huge 50p per minute. BT Broadband Charge 4p a minute for their technincal and support helpline. BT also offer an added support service when you sign up to their broadband package. For an extra 34p a day, there is a free number to call with expert IT professionals at the end of the phone. They can access your PC remotely to fix the problem in seconds. expert help is available from 8am to 11pm, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. With 13 million broadband users in the UK, 5 million of them needed support last year. It was worked out at around 19 million calls were made reporting problems and the cost of these calls amounted to £34 million! Even more a shocking a third of the total call cost would have been wasted listening to elevator music on hold. This seems a lot of money to pay to sort out a problem for a service you have already paid for. Calls to the peak rate numbers could cost over £10 per problem. Customers have to take these calls into consideration as the cheap monthly deals may be more expensive if it turns out that you are not getting the service they paid for. Broadband companies are clearly making lots of extra profit with their support service but it doesn't seem ethical that they should be gaining from failing services that customers have already paid for.
Staff editor, Broadband Section, August 2007 |
