photo - Glow Images/East News
Data provided by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) show that the number of complaints filed by consumers against telecommunications companies is higher than in the case of any other sector.
In 2013, there were 53,000 such grievances and the number grows each year, the watchdog said. The total number of all complaints from consumers was 443,000 that year.
Some of the grievances are directed not to the UOKiK, but to the Electronic Communications Office (UKE).
In 2013 the UKE was asked to intervene 6,800 times and in the first half of 2014 it mediated 1,583 times and made 2,914 other interventions based on consumer complaints.
Paradoxically, the rising wave of complaints may be the result of telecoms fighting to get new customers.
The sector has been going through a lower revenue period and every new client is of high value. Intense competition has however not translated into a higher quality of services.
Both market watchdogs say that consumers complain about various aspects of the companies' services, including unexpected extra fees, not fulfilling the conditions of promotional contracts, payments for roaming or for premium services.
Some practices from telecoms are as absurd as blocking the phone of a customer who called the same number very often.
This was the case for a Nju Mobile customer who phoned his child. But the company's regulations forbid “generating artificial traffic.”
“In reality consumers complain about all possible areas of telecommunications services,” Longina Kaczmarek from the Szczecin conumer rights office of the UOKiK told Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
“Of course it is not so that the customer is always right. But very often, even if they are wrong, it is because they do not understand increasingly complicated regulations, fee tables and various loopholes presented by the telecom operator,” she said. (kw)