Earlier this month, Finland’s mobile broadband services were criticised as being far from the top of the class internationally in a survey carried out by the Universities of Helsinki and Oviedo, Spain. Now a fresh customer satisfaction survey puts home broadband services under a critical eye.
Epsi Rating’s survey shows Finnish consumers are the least satisfied with their home broadband connection in the Nordic region. Dissatisfaction among Finnish users was the greatest among all of the 13 countries surveyed.
In addition to the Nordic nations, the survey also looked at the Baltic States and a number of Eurasian countries.
Elisa and Sonera Customers Most Critical
According to the survey, consumers singled out the slow and ineffective customer service offered by Elisa and Sonora.
”Customer service lines are just unable to cope with the high number of clients they have in Finland,” says Epsi Finland CEO Mats Nybondas. Several calls are needed before a problem is resolved, he adds.
Elisa and Sonera customers tend to be more critical of their broadband connections than those using other service providers. Consumers were asked only for their views on the provider they currently use.
Pay-TV Fees Excessive
The survey also revealed annoyance with pay-tv customer service and the imbalance between service costs and the channels provided. Many customers complained of having to purchase a complete channel package rather than just choosing the channels they wanted.
Unjustifiable tariffs also came under scrutiny, with the lack of services linked to the annual ’card payment’ drawing particular annoyance.
”The feeling is that there are too many individual costs. The annual card is a separate cost and viewers feel they have to purchase something they don’t want in order to get something they do,” Nybondas claims.
He specifically points to the tariffs charged for the "Plus TV” service. In his view, they are unjustified. Customers feel they pay highly for something quite unnecessary in order to procure what they actually want.
By contrast, though, consumers were much more contented with mobile phone services.
Some 6,000 Finns were surveyed by Epsi Rating. The company says service providers did not finance the survey but could purchase the results if they so wished.
EPSI Rating is an independent organisation that provides neutral performance assessments to various companies.
