The UK's best and worst mobile phone providers

Sky and Tesco Mobile are the UK's best pay-monthly network providers while Virgin picks up the wooden spoon, latest complaints figures reveal.

Sky and Tesco Mobile generated the joint fewest official complaints among pay-monthly customers, new quarterly figures from the telecoms watchdog have revealed.

At the other end of the table, Virgin replaced Three as the provider with the highest number of complaints.

According to Ofcom, the most common complaints among Virgin customers related to changing provider (32%), complaints handling (31%) and issues relating to billing, pricing and charges (15%). 

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Best and worst: networks ranked

The graphic from Ofcom below highlights how all the major networks compare and covers the three months from July to September 2020, which are the latest figures available.

It's worth pointing out that, while the number of complaints appears low for all mobile providers, these are issues that customers have felt the need to escalate to Ofcom as they've been unable to get their issue resolved directly with their provider. 

In other words, the actual number of complaints made directly to network providers will be much higher. 

Best and worst mobile providers

Tesco and Sky generated just one official complaint per 100,000 customers, putting them top of the league.

EE and O2 were tied in second place with two complaints per 100,000 and were the only other providers to come in under the industry average of three per 100,000.

At the other end of the scale, Virgin Mobile saw complaints jump sharply from five per 100,000 customers to nine, making it the worst performer ranked by Ofcom.

Three was the second-worst, generating seven complaints per 100,000.

Vodafone fared slightly better with five complaints, while ID Mobile and BT both had four.

Which providers offer consistently good service?

Ofcom publishes data on the number of complaints it receives about each of the big telecoms providers, including mobile phone networks, each quarter.

Looking at such a short period can be unreliable – any provider can have a problem that takes a few months to fix, after all.

In order to give you a clearer picture of how the mobile network giants consistently fare, we've listed the complaints figures for the last six quarters in the table below.

If you're fed up with your provider, take a look at our pain-free guide to cancelling your contract then search for a new mobile phone deal on Carphone Warehouse or another comparison site.

Complaints per 100,000 customers over the last 18 months

*Virgin dropped out of the Ofcom tables

Mobile coverage

Practically speaking, the most important thing to keep in mind when signing up for any phone contract is the coverage and reception offered by the operator (you can read how about the best networks for signal and speed here).

Ultimately, an extremely helpful call centre is of little use if you can't even phone them in the first place!

To make sure you don't live in a particular network's 'blackspot', the links below will take you to each network’s coverage map or coverage checker, so you can get a decent idea of the coverage you can expect where you live.

• EE
• O2
• Three
• Talkmobile
• TalkTalk
• Tesco Mobile
• Virgin Mobile
• Vodafone
• iD Mobile

Finally, find out which other providers you should be dodging by reading The UK’s worst pay TV provider, The UK's worst home phone provider and The UK’s best and worst broadband providers.

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