The results of a survey conducted by price comparison website, uSwitch, shows that with the worst Internet connectivity in the developed world, what Scotland has is so unreliable that individuals are spending around £600k per annum on technical support phone calls.

Many of these keep us on hold for long periods of time, driving up the cost to us and the revenue to those – most – who charge for the service.

The reasons for most calls is failure in network connection. 40% solve the problem in one phone call. The other 60% face further lengthy phone calls and yet more costs before they’re back online.

On the matter of the cost of calls to non-geographic phone numbers, some phone companies include such calls within specific call packages, which brings down the cost of getting the necessary technical support.

Orange (42%) and Tiscali (47%) got the lowest satisfaction ratings for their technical support service. The average rating was 55% making it a close call on whether or not there’s any point in using the service.

The top three – the only ones to clear the 59% satisfaction barrier – were Sky (60%), Plusnet (70%) and O2 (75%). O2 also charges nothing for the service and puts you on hold for the shortest average time – 2 minutes.

BT charges nothing for technical support calls to its own services but can rake in a huge premium for calls to other service providers. For example:

• If you have a Tiscali broadband service and you call its technical support service on a Tiscali phone service, you pay 91p for the average call. If you make the same call to Tiscali on a BT phone line, you’ll pay £1.75 for the same call – almost 100% more expensive.
• If you have a Sky broadband service and you make an average length call to its technical support from a Sky Talk phone service – its free. It will cost you 89p if you phone from a BT line.

BT’s own customer satisfaction rating for technical support is no higher than the average – at 55%. Talk Talk is a smidgen better at 56% but keeps you waiting longest, probably because its customer base is greater – at 12 minutes. This is twice as much as the average 6 minutes (which BT achieves). Both support lines are free.

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