Canadians are increasingly unhappy with their wireless service providers.
The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services (CCTS), which is the federal watchdog that handles customer complaints about telecommunications and television services, said that it saw a 57% spike in complaints in 2017-2018, most of them involving wireless providers.
The CCTS said in a new report that it handled 14,272 complaints from consumers in 2017-2018. Of that, 41.5% of them were about wireless service and 29.2% were about internet service. Complaints about television made up 10.6% of the total complaints.
Most of the complaints that the CCTS received up to September 2018 were the same issues that it has been dealing with for the past decade—bill surprises by wireless operators and non-disclosure of information.
"Customers will communicate with their service provider and then find out that the reality of what they get is not what they expected to get. This results in billing issues, in charges people don't expect, on limitation on bandwidth or data," said CCTS Commissioner Howard Maker in a written statement. "It's a mismatch of customer expectations and what their service provider delivers."
The CCTS said that it expects to see complaints rise even more in 2019. And Maker said that the complaints have risen despite a revised Wireless Code that came into effect in 2017 and is meant to protect consumers.
Among Canada`s telecommunications companies, Bell received the majority of consumer complaints over the past year at 4,734, followed by Rogers at 1,449 complaints and Telus at 944 consumer complaints. Smaller companies Freedom Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Fido each received more than 700 complaints from the public.
