Home phone News

TalkTalk retains Wooden Spoon Award for worst customer service

Thursday 12 January, 2012

By Kelvin Goodson

Home phone and broadband provider is voted worst company for customer service by Daily Mail readers for the second year running.

TalkTalk has been voted “the company with Britain’s shoddiest customer service in 2011”.

The home phone and broadband provider “won” Money Mail’s Wooden Spoon Award for last year, becoming the first company to clinch the trophy two years on the trot.

The award, voted for by readers, went to TalkTalk ahead of HM Revenue & Customs and high street bank Santander, after it received over a quarter of the votes.

TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding told the Money Mail: “I apologise to those we have let down. We are working very hard on improvements for all customers.”

Voters told the personal finance section of the Daily Mail they had nominated TalkTalk’s customer service for a variety of reasons, from promised callbacks never being received to unexpected bills for engineer visits.

Last year was far from a golden one for TalkTalk, with communications regulator Ofcom reporting recently that it received more complaints about TalkTalk’s landline service than about that of any other home phone provider in the three months up to September 2011.

TalkTalk said at the time: “It’s encouraging that complaints continue to come down. They account for 0.07% of our landline customer base and, in November, Ofcom reported that ‘there has been improvement in many areas of TalkTalk’s customer service since February 2011’.”

TalkTalk was also the most complained about telephone company between April and June 2011 and October 2010 and February 2011, but despite this its performance has actually improved over this time.