Ofcom: broadband speed code fail

Ofcom | Call for broadband providers to improve speeds information: "some sales agents had to be prompted by mystery shoppers to provide speed estimates, despite the Code requiring that this information should be volunteered as early as possible in the sales process. Overall, speed estimates were provided without prompting from the mystery shoppers in 59 per cent of all calls. Providers who were most likely to give callers an estimated speed without prompting were Sky (72 per cent of cases), Karoo (76 per cent) and Plusnet (67 per cent).
TalkTalk (47 per cent of cases) and BT Total Broadband (48 per cent) were significantly less likely to provide a speed estimate without prompting from the caller.  Following discussions with Ofcom, both BT and TalkTalk have agreed to address this issue by amending their staff training and sales processes."

Ofcom has taken action to further improve broadband speeds information for consumers, including:

1. having ongoing discussions with ISPs about the information that their telephone sales agents provide to consumers and how this could be improved;
2. making clear to ISPs that the Code’s requirement of providing information on speeds as early as possible in the call should be adhered to by ensuring that sales agents offer a speed estimate early in the conversation; and
3. updating consumer guides on choosing a broadband provider and broadband speeds to help consumers ask the right questions before signing up to a new service or switching provider.

The Code was last updated in 2011 and Ofcom will carry out a further review over the next year to ensure that it is still appropriate (whhhaaaatttt???!!!) for consumers’ needs.

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