BT Vision beats rivals to honour of being worst UK Pay-TV

BT Vision is the most complained about pay TV service in the UK, regulator Ofcom said, receiving nearly four times as many whinges in the first quarter of this year as Virgin Media and nine times as many as Sky.

Although moans about paid television services were generally low, BT got the most with 0.27 per 1,000 customers, mainly about sales issues and problems with billing, Ofcom's analysis showed.

However, the regulator said it had noted that complaints about BT Vision had fallen since the last quarter of 2011, when 0.38 in every 1,000 were ticked off.

BT pointed out to The Register that its telly service is dependent on the quality of customers' Freeview reception and broadband, as opposed to the other big boys in television Sky and Virgin Media, who deliver via satellite dish and cable respectively.

"BT Vision is Britain’s fastest growing TV service: from spring 2012 we began to add more new customers than Sky and Virgin combined; when you have more new customers you see more problems in early life," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

In landline and broadband provision, TalkTalk kept its place at the bottom of the charts for the sixth quarter in a row, still the most annoying provider.

Ofcom got 0.72 complaints about TalkTalk per 1,000 customers between January and March, but that was less moans than it got in the previous five quarters about the telco.

"We have been working hard to deliver improvements that give our customers a better experience and as a result we’re receiving 31 per cent fewer calls to our customer contact centres," a TalkTalk spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "We do recognise there is still work to do and we are continually pushing through improvements."

In mobiles, 3UK got the most whinges, although that was still relatively few at 0.14 per 1,000 customers. ®