Ofcom has today published the latest figures for complaints it received about the UK's major landline, mobile, broadband and pay-TV providers.

Covering the period between October and December 2022, Shell Energy continued to be the most complained-about landline and broadband provider, attracting more complaints about its service than in the previous quarter (July to September 2022). Customer complaints were mainly about faults, service and getting services installed.

Sky continued to generate the fewest broadband complaints, with EE and Sky continuing to be jointly the least complained-about landline providers.

BT Mobile, Virgin Mobile and O2 were the most complained-about mobile operators, with customers primarily complaining about how their complaints had been handled (BT Mobile, Virgin Mobile), their experience with faults, service and getting services connected (O2), as well as issues changing provider (BT Mobile).

Sky Mobile, EE, Tesco Mobile and Three attracted the fewest complaints in the mobile sector.

Virgin Media and BT were the pay-TV service providers that attracted the most complaints. Virgin Media customers were most likely to be unhappy with how it handled their complaints, while BT customers complained about their experiences of faults, service and getting services installed. Sky received the fewest pay-TV complaints.

Ofcom said: "We remain concerned about Shell Energy's persistently high complaint volumes. We have been engaging closely with the provider on its plans to improve its customer service, and expect to see results of this in the coming months.

"The numbers of complaints we received during this period were similar to the previous quarter. Complaints about landline and pay-TV services decreased slightly, while complaints about broadband and pay-monthly mobile services stayed the same.

"Year on year, the numbers of complaints we received about broadband services increased slightly, while complaints for landline, pay-monthly mobile and pay-TV services stayed the same."

Punchline says: "Allow me to put Vodafone in the broadband complaint mix. Only yesterday, I was promised an engineer would turn up to install full fibre broadband sometime between 1pm and 6pm. 

"I waited all afternoon to no avail before deciding to call Vodafone to ask what had happened. I spent 50 minutes waiting for my call to be answered and when I finally got through I was told that there was an issue with my order and I would have to place a fresh order. Unbelievable! No courtesy call from Vodafone at all to let me know there was a problem and a total waste of an afternoon."