News, Press Releases - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 11:16 - 0 Comments

Consumer complaints grow, cell phone beefs are tops

Regine Schlesinger reporting
CHICAGO (WBBM) – Chicago’s Better Business Bureau says it received 10 percent more consumer complaints last year, with the cell phone industry the biggest target.

The Bureau says nearly one million complaints were logged by disgruntled consumers last year. More than 37,000 of those involved cell phone service and equipment, about 2 percent more than the year before. 

In second place were cable and satellite television providers with more than 32,000 complaints.

Banks were in third place with almost 30,000 complaints, up a whopping 42 percent over 2008.

But, the Bureau says the cell phone and cable TV industries also improved their rate of resolving disputes.  Both industries cleared up more than 97 percent of the complaints. The resolution by banks dropped slightly to around 95 percent.

More information at chicago.bbb.org

Following are the top 10 industries by volume of consumer complaints filed across North America with BBB in 2009:

 

Industry

Total Complaints

Rank by number of complaints1

Percentage Change over 2008

Percentage of Resolved Complaints 2

Cellular Phones Service & Equipment

37,477

1

2.1%

97.4%

Television – Cable, CATV & Satellite

32,616

2

8.7%

97.2%

Banks

29,920

3

42.3%

95.2%

Auto Dealers-New Cars

26,888

4

-2.4%

84.1%

Internet Shopping

21,494

5

9.4%

71.7%

Collection Agencies

15,797

6

-3.3%

86.6%

Auto Dealers – Used Cars

13,686

7

2.5%

70.8%

Telephone Companies

13,470

8

11.2%

96.1%

Furniture – Retail

13,158

9

-2.9%

78.3%

Auto Repair & Service

12,736

10

9.5%

65.9%

1 Complaint rank is out of 3,947 industries categories

2 Average resolution rate across all industries for 2009 was 76.2 percent

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.