Broadband firms warned on tech help

Broadband providers risk losing subscribers if their technical support phone lines fail to deal with calls quickly and competently, a price comparison website says.



More than 16million calls for help, costing up to £1.75 a minute, are made by broadband users every year, equating to 2,000 calls an hour, according to USwitch.



Although costs varied, most of the12000 customers questioned by the site needed to make at least 2 calls to resolve their problem, which was typically connection-related.



The failure of the helpline to solve the user's problem in one call may explain why almost half of the respondents said they were not satisfied with their service.



Users also have to put up with being kept on hold – on average for six minutes out of the total call duration of 17 minutes, shows the research into 9 branded providers.



TalkTalk, which disputes the research, kept customers waiting the longest – an average time of 12 minutes, in contrast to 02, whose customers queued for 2 minutes.



02 also emerged with the highest rating (75 per cent) for technical support, followed closely by PlusNet, while Orange scored the lowest with a rating of just 42 per cent.



All the broadband providers were praised for having ironed out set-up issues, which have halved in number since 2007, and many have cut their average call charges.



Yet Jason Glynn of USwitch said it was still "disheartening" to see some providers continuing to charge customers for tech help-lines, which rake in £6million a year.



He added: "In such a competitive arena it's surprising that they haven't wised up to the fact that customers expect more from their broadband service than a cheap deal.



"They want a service they can rely on – and when things go wrong they need assurance that their service will be back up and running again as quickly as possible".