TalkTalk once again draws most complaints

The woes at TalkTalk continue after the regulator revealed it remained the most complained-about landline and broadband provider.

The group has been hit by a series of regulatory issues over charging customers for services they had cancelled, leading to the largest fine for a telecoms provider in the UK last month.

Ofcom released its second report into complaints against telecoms providers yesterday, which showed similar results to the first, with TalkTalk coming off worst.

In the second quarter, the figure was reduced, but with 0.8 complaints for every 1,000 landline customers and 0.58 complaints per 1,000 broadband customers, it once again took the wooden spoon.

A spokesman said: "We recognise the complaints are too high, but they are not out of control." He added the 50 per cent declines shown in the figures were "encouraging". TalkTalk's problems relate to the integration of Tiscali. This year, it has paid out £2.5m to 62,000 customers who had cancelled the service and yet were still charged.

Just months later, however, Ofcom slapped the group with a fine of £3m "for breaching consumer rules" when the complaints failed to dry up. In yesterday's report, Virgin Media received the fewest complaints for fixed-line and broadband services, Ofcom said, with just 0.15 complaints per 1,000 customers. Of the mobile operators, Three UK was the worst, with 0.14 complaints per 1,000.

Claudio Pollack, the consumer group director of Ofcom, said the reports gave the customers important information and "hopes to incentivise communications providers to improve their performance".