Ofcom fines EE £1m for customer service failures
UK regulator Ofcom said on Friday that it has fined EE £1m for failing to comply with its rules on handling customer complaints.
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The investigation into Britain’s largest mobile phone company, which is currently in the process of being taken over by BT, was part of the regulator’s wider monitoring and enforcement programme to ensure communications providers deal with customer complaints appropriately and fairly.
Ofcom’s investigation found that over the period from 22 July 2011 to 8 April 2014, EE did not provide certain customers with accurate or adequate information about their right to make a complaint to an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme.
The company failed to send out written notifications to a number of customers that should have referenced their right to take their complaint to ADR eight weeks after they first raised their complaint.
It also failed to state in its customer complaints code that, where relevant, customers could access its ADR scheme by requesting a ‘deadlock letter’.
A number of customers who had requested it during this time were not sent it as required, and in some cases customers were told by EE that letters of this type were not issued, Ofcom said.
In addition, between July 2011 and February 2014, EE sent paper bills to Orange customers and written notifications to Orange, 4GEE and T-Mobile customers that did not reference that they can use its ADR scheme for free.
In June, the Competition and Markets Authority agreed to fast-track an in-depth probe into BT’s proposed £12.5bn takeover of EE.
The CMA said it believed that by coming together, the country’s two largest broadband and mobile phone companies could substantially lessen competition in the market.