BT rivals in complaints deluge

13 April 2012

COMPLAINTS about some telephone companies' hard-sell tactics in trying to grab a share of the home landlines market from BT are running at plague proportions.

BT, which has about 70% of the home phones market, says it is receiving up to 14,000 complaints a month about its rivals' activities.

In some instances, it says, competitors' sales staff are masquerading as BT's, and piggybacking on its recent residential price changes, to confuse customers into signing up for the alternative services they are selling.

Other grievances concern customers being signed-up to a new provider even though they had not agreed to accept the alternative service.

Ofcom is now assessing responses to a consultation it launched in the spring about mis-selling and hopes to deliver proposals by this autumn.

Its key decision will be whether it should allow the current voluntary code of practice to continue or introduce a mandatory code which would empower it to fine telcos in the way Ofgem fines energy providers.

Ofcom receives between 300 and 350 complaints about so-called 'slamming' - as misselling is known in the industry - each month. But a spokesman admitted the problem could be much greater with many mis-sold customers simply cancelling their contracts during the standard 10-day cooling-off period with new providers.

Among organisations that have registered worries about the aggressive tactics used in selling services are the National Consumer Council, the Consumers' Association and Age Concern.

Worries that mis-selling in the sector could reach similar proportions to those in the deregulated energy market, prompted MP Richard Allan to table an early day motion in parliament last month urging Ofcom to take a firmer grip on the situation.

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