Comcast said the number of customers complaining about internet service through the FCC declined 43% from May 2016 to May 2017.
The No. 1 provider of wireline services in the U.S. made the boast in response to a Philadelphia Inquirer story, which found through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that Comcast had received 41,760 complaints about internet service from November 2014, when the FCC implemented its current complaint system, through May 2017.
For comparison’s sake, during that same period, No. 4 U.S. wireline broadband provider Verizon garnered 9,259 complaints, according to the FOIA data.
A Comcast representative told FierceCable it had no additional data to add to this story.
Comcast has 25.3 million wireline customers vs. around 7 million for Verizon. As the Inquirer noted, Comcast averaged one complaint per 606 internet customers vs. one complaint per 756 customers for Verizon over the two-and-a-half-year window.
For its part, Comcast cited its 2015 customer service initiative for driving down the rate of complaints. This push included a $300 million investment, the hiring of thousands of new representatives and adoption of new protocols.
“It’s a great product. I like our results. I like our focus on customer service,” Comcast Customer Service Chief Charlie Herrin told the paper.
Notably, more than half of the registered internet service complaints about Comcast—21,388—related to billing issues. The second biggest issue was lack of access to the internet (8,664 complaints), while speed was the key problem in 4,853 FCC complaints.
During the November 2014-May 2017 window, only 25,865 customers lodged complaints about Comcast TV service.