Complaints from the general public in the field of electronic communications 2007 - PTS-ER-2008:12
29/04/2008
The National Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) has been commissioned by the Swedish Government to report annually on the type and number of complaints from the general public that are forwarded to the Agency. In accordance with this year's assignment, this report also accounts for the number of complaints relating to consumers and the number relating to business operators.
In June 2007, statistics were reported for complaints submitted as of January up to and including April 2007. This report includes statistics for the whole of 2007.
PTS registered 2 434 complaints in 2007. This is more than 1 200 complaints fewer than in 2006. 2 196 of these complaints came from consumers and 238 from business operators. The number of complaints from entrepreneurs was more or less the same as in 2006, which means that the lower number can be completely attributed to consumer complaints. One contributory reason for this is assumed to be the fact that some of the complaints are now being forwarded to the Swedish Consumer Bureau for Telecom and Internet (KTIB) instead.
Fixed telephony has represented the largest percentage of complaints in recent years and the same applied in 2007, when more than half of all complaints related to fixed telephony.
As in previous years, the percentage of complaints rose as regards marketing. Complaints concerning aggressive marketing methods in the form of street trading are common and this method of sales often leads to incorrect connection (i.e. an undesired connection to a new operator), which in turn leads to a large number of complaints relating to this. However, street trading is not encompassed by the cooling off right contained in the Act on Distance Contracts and Home Sales (2005:59). In the opinion of PTS, consumer protection should be strengthened by expanding the cooling off right so that it also applies to street trading.
Complaints from businesses usually come from small business owners and this group is also frequently affected by problems attributable to marketing and incorrect connection. Despite the fact that small business owners do not have any cooling off right under the Act on Distance Contracts and Home Sales, they also lack access to any autonomous dispute resolution body outside the courts. The only way that a small business owner can resolve a dispute with an operator is to institute proceedings at court; a procedure that can be both costly and time-consuming. For this reason, PTS considers that small business owners should be given more opportunities than they currently have to have disputes examined outside court; for example, in the form of a dispute resolution board financed by operators.
One positive trend is that the sharp drop in complaints relating to ADSL (e.g. complaints concerning blocking, switching and transfer problems as well as data rate) that started during 2006 continued in 2007. On the other hand, the number of complaints relating to mobile telephony increased; it may be assumed that the reason for this is the increased marketing of mobile telephony, mainly through what is known as 'street trading' as described above.