The country’s telecom watchdog says in its annual report that it received more consumer complaints about TV services than any other, despite those gripes falling outside its purview for nearly another year.
The Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services says it received 8,678 complaints about TV issues between Aug. 1, 2024, and July 31 of this year. That’s up from 7,294 similar concerns during the same period a year prior.
But TV complaints won’t fall under the CCTS’s mandate until September when it will begin to assess, accept and help resolve consumer issues about these services.
Currently, the CCTS can only address complaints about cellphone, land line, Internet and long-distance (including prepaid calling cards) services, as well as operator services, directory assistance and white pages directories.
The watchdog says it accepted 8,197 individual complaints, which addressed an average of 1.9 issues each. All together, it dealt with 7,931 issues about wireless, 4,177 issues about Internet and 3,086 issues about local phone services.
Billing was the No. 1 consumer grievance in each of the three categories.
The largest number of complaints were registered against Bell (35.9 per cent), followed by Rogers (10.5 per cent) and Telus (seven per cent). Freedom Mobile, the company formerly known as Wind Mobile, and Virgin Mobile both represented 6.1 per cent.
This represented a decrease in the number of complaints for each company except Telus, which received 22.3 per cent more complaints against its services.
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