Advice offered to those hit with broadband service outages

Consumer champion Which? is offering consumers advice about how to ensure their complaints are taken seriously and dealt with properly by broadband providers.

The issuing of the advice has coincided with the release of new research showing that the average household experiences three broadband outages over the course of a month.

One in four households questioned by Compare the Market said that they experience service outages every month. Ten per cent of the households surveyed said that their broadband failed around ten times each month.

Despite the fact that failing broadband services seem to be commonplace across the UK, the researchers also found that two in three households said they don’t complain about the outages, fearing that their complaint will not be handled well by their provider.

The researchers found that 93 per cent of complainants did not receive compensation from their broadband provider after a failure in service. They also found that problems took around 2.5 hours to fix on average.

In response to these figures, Which? has advised consumers to try its list of troubleshooting techniques to try to solve the connectivity problem without the need to contact the engineers. However, if these fail, Which? encourages consumers to log complaints with ISPs.

They claim that, as consumers have contracts with their service providers, if broadband firms fail to deliver either the expected speed of service, or a broadband connection at all, they are in breach of contract. Which? advises: “...you should contact your broadband service provider and explain that you consider it to be in breach of contract as it’s failing to provide the service it said it would.”

It then refers consumers to its online guide, which features specific guidance on how to make a complaint to a broadband provider.