Mobile phone company staff in the dark about tariffs

05 April 2007

Customers could struggle to establish the terms of their tariff with their mobile phone provider because customer service representatives are not clued-up enough, a consumer report from Onecompare.com has showed.

Keeping mobile phone bills down is a crucial way to regulate your spending. Still, if customer service representatives are unable to answer basic questions, customers could find it hard to make comparisons between different providers.

A mystery shopper asked each of the UK’s significant providers a series of questions about peak and off-peak rates and international roaming costs during 100 telephone calls in January and February.

According to the survey, staff at O2 were the most likely to be caught out by a tariff question, with four in ten questions answered with inaccurate or inadequate price information.

Virgin Mobile outperformed competitors, with staff offering the highest proportion of accurate information.

The runners-up, in order of accuracy, were 3: T-Mobile, Orange and Vodafone.

But O2 spokespeople insisted that the survey had drawn sweeping conclusions from a limited study.

“We continue to invest heavily in ensuring that our customers receive the best possible service,” an O2 spokesperson said.

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