Consumer complaints about Canada’s telecommunications companies rose 12% in 2022 from a year earlier, according to a new report by the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services’ (CCTS).
The report found that Rogers Communications (RCI) had the most complaints with 17.4% of all negative comments received from Canadian consumers.
Nearly 7,500 complaints were accepted by the commission last year, of which 88% were eventually resolved.
The national service outage at Rogers Communications last summer was one of the most frequently cited complaints among Canadians.
Rogers was the subject of 1,294 complaints, a 29% increase from a year earlier. The company announced that it would credit its customers for five days of service following the mass outage that left millions of Canadians without internet service last July.
Bell (BCE) accounted for 14.9% of complaints, down 6.1% from a year earlier, while Telus received 13% of all complaints, up 81.3% from 2021.
News of the increased consumer complaints comes days after the federal government approved Rogers’ $26 billion takeover of rival Shaw Communications (SJR), a development that consumer advocates say will lessen competition in the Canadian wireless market.
Rogers’ stock is down 11% over the last 12 months and trading at $64.54 per share.