posted
So, can you guess the industry that drew the most fire from consumers last year, according to the Better Business Bureau? If you picked the banking industry—a good guess, given the 140-odd bank failures in 2009—you guessed wrong.
Turns out that more Americans were hopping mad about their wireless carriers, with a grand total of 37,477 complaints lodged through the Better Business Bureau, according to a Wall Street Journal blog post.
Complaints "rang[ed] from device malfunction to billing," the Journal reports, although the story includes another interesting statistic: a full 97.4 percent of the cell phone complaints filed with the BBB were apparently "resolved" by the companies involved.
The next most-complained-about industry in 2009, according to the BBB: Cable and satellite TV service, with a total of 32,616 complaints filed, up nearly nine percent from 2008. Like the cell phone industry, though, cable and satellite carriers were reportedly pretty good at fixing said complaints, earning a solid 97.2-percent resolution rate.
Other tech-related industries in the BBB's 2009 hall of shame: "internet shopping," which came in fifth with 21,494 complaints (free online trials for "weight-loss supplements, credit scores and teeth whiteners" that turn into paid subscriptions caught most of the flak, the Journal reports), while landline telephone companies landed in eighth place with 13,470 complaints.
And what about the banking industry, you ask? Believe it or not, the 29,920 complaints registered with the Better Business Bureau last year was only good enough for third place, despite the record 140 bank closures last year; that said, the number of banking industry complaints shot up 42.3 percent from 2008, the highest percentage increase by far of any industry in the BBB's top—er, bottom ten.
Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
