Most of the complaints that the country’s mobile phone operators receive are related to billing and service quality, showed a recent data of the telecom regulator.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission in May asked the six mobile operators to submit their customer complaint-related data to the commission for the month of June.
According to BTRC officials, mobile operators usually do not share their customer complaint details to the regulator but under the Quality of Service directive the BTRC is now looking into the matter.
They said billing-related complaints mostly occurred due to higher charging of customers whereas poor network capacity and lack of maintenance were the core reasons for quality of service-related complaints.
The data showed leading mobile operator Grameenphone, in between June 1 and June 28, received 1,57,804 complaints where the highest number of complaints, 24,689, were related to billing and tariff.
‘In June we received 24,689 bill-related queries from the customers. Most of these queries were immediately solved by the front liners while around 5 per cent were found to be valid after further investigations and customers got necessary compensation/adjustment as per process,’ GP said in an email reply to New Age on Sunday.
The second largest operator, Banglalink, received 14,969 complaints during the same time where the highest number of complaints, 7,902, were received for quality of service.
Asked about the issue, Banglalink, in an email reply to New Age, said, ‘Banglalink has always prioritised the needs of its customers.’
Citycell received 10,900 complaints from June 4 to July 1 where the highest number of complaints, 8,861, were related to quality of service.
The unsolved complaint rate of Citycell was 25 per cent during the period.
State-run Teletalk received the sec ond highest number of complaints although it gave data of only two weeks.
From June 1 to June 7 and June 22 to June 28 the company received 73,444 complaints where 19,500 complaints were related to billing and tariff.
Teletalk, however, had 5 per cent unsolved complaints during the period.
The BTRC data also showed that from June 4 to July 1 mobile operator Robi received 66,526 complaints from its users where it received 8,452 complaints related to quality of service.
In June, Robi received huge number of complaints related to SIM block.
Robi failed to solve 9 per cent complaints it received during the period, it showed.
Asked about the issue Robi said there were number of reasons for receiving service quality and SIM block-related complaints.
‘We always try to provide our valued customers with the best quality service. In some cases we block SIMs suspecting illegal call termination,’ Robi spokesman Mohiuddin Babar told New Age on Sunday.
Airtel received 29,908 complaints from June 4 to July 1 where the highest number of complaints, 6,895, were related to talk-time.
The Airtel, however, has zero per cent unsolved number of complaints during the period.
BTRC officials said the regulator was analysing the data and looking for a pattern.
‘We will also measure how the operators were maintaining complaint-related standards mentioned in our service quality guideline,’ a BTRC official told New Age.
-With New Age input
