FAQs

We have a step-by-step guide to the dispute process on Our Process page.

As well as telling your provider to put things right for you we might ask them to make a financial award. A typical financial award ranges between £50-100. Find out more on What to expect.

Any evidence of the contact you’ve had with the provider, such as copies of emails or letters, details of phone calls you’ve had with dates, times and names of people you’ve spoken to.

You also need to provide any evidence you may have that shows the issues you've been experiencing. This may include documentation such as bills, bank statements, etc.

If you provide enough information and evidence for us to fully accept your case, your permission is needed for us to look into the dispute and contact your provider directly. At this point your provider will know you have raised a dispute with us.

Do:

• Be aware of any deadline for logging your dispute
• If you don’t hear from your provider, contact them again to check they're dealing with your dispute
• Keep a note of each contact you make and what is said
• Provide evidence about any issue
• Be clear about how you would like them to fix the problem

Don’t:

• Be scared of complaining. Complaining can resolve issues and stop problems happening again
• Get flustered. Keep calm and be clear
• Put it off. Tell your provider as soon as you notice a problem to stop it from getting worse

After 8 weeks you can choose to wait and see if your provider resolves your issues with more time, but your provider can't prevent you from raising your dispute to us after this period.

Yes. If the provider has not resolved the dispute to your satisfaction, if the issue re-occurs, or if new issues arise, we can still look into your dispute, however any resolution from your provider will be taken in to consideration.

Your provider has 8 weeks to resolve your dispute. This is to give them enough time to assess the situation and the evidence to find an appropriate resolution.

Let your provider know of any problems as soon as possible. The sooner you tell them, the sooner they have the opportunity to put things right. It may also help any further issues from escalating. If after 8 weeks your issue is still unresolved, we can then investigate.

We would not recommend cancelling any direct debits or refusing to pay bills whilst the dispute is under investigation. This is to avoid any further issues developing. For example, default on your credit file. 

Yes. As someone who has decided to use our service you are free to stop the process and withdraw your dispute at any point.

You can communicate with your Dispute Resolution Executive directly via our online portal. Sign in

Our service offers a free alternative to going to court and you do not need to involve a lawyer or legal advisor when bringing your case to us. You are, however, entitled to seek independent advice or be represented or helped by a third party at any stage of the process.

When you accept a resolution we have decided, your provider is obliged to implement it within 28 days. Within that time your Dispute Resolution Executive (DRE) will track progress on the resolution. If it remains outstanding after 28 days, we will contact the provider to understand why and will keep you informed until it has been completed.

We're impartial, so we don't help either side to build their case. However, we can support you through the process if you’re unable or unconfident that you can complete the necessary forms. Contact us and one of our team will be on hand to support you. We encourage consumers to provide as much information (or evidence) as soon as possible, as this will help us to reach a fair decision as quickly as possible.

If we decide the provider has made a mistake, or treated you unfairly, we’ll recommend which action they should take to put things right. This could include:

• A practical action (for example, apply a credit, cancel an account, apply a specified tariff)
• An apology
• A financial award to acknowledge the difficulties encountered
• Recommendations for the company to prevent the issue happening again
• Or, a combination of these

For more information visit out What to expect page.

The final decision is based on the information provided by you and the provider and includes the remedies that we feel are a fair resolution to the dispute.

No. If you don’t receive the outcome you are looking for you can reject our decision and pursue your dispute through other methods, such as through the courts. In a limited number of circumstances you may be able to appeal our decision, if new evidence has come to light since you submitted your dispute or if a material error has been made.

If 28 days have gone by and the resolutions are still outstanding, you need to contact your Dispute Resolution Executive (DRE) and let them know. Your DRE will contact the provider and ensure the resolutions are fully completed. Sign In to your account here.

We're sorry to hear that you are unhappy with your experience of our service. To let us know how we could improve, complete and submit our contact form and select "Complain about your service".

For more information on the 'unhappy with our service' process, visit this page of the website: Unhappy with our service.

If your provider can’t do anything else to resolve with your dispute, you may receive a letter or email from them stating this. This is called a ‘deadlock letter’. The letter will tell you that you can now contact the Communications Ombudsman and will include our contact details. You must escalate your dispute within 12 months of receiving the letter.

That’s correct – we are not the only ADR provider in the communications sector, and so you may need to contact CISAS to pursue your dispute. 

The maximum award our service can provide as a remedy is £10,000. This is a total award and would include any corrective action and goodwill award.

We only accept disputes about Electronic Communications Services (ECS) and handsets are not considered an ECS. However, some providers have allowed us to look at their disputes about handsets. It depends on who your provider is as to whether we can accept your dispute.

No, this falls outside of our terms of reference as it is a financial services product. You should contact the Financial Ombudsman Service for further advice. 

Yes – this sounds like something that we can look at. We would review your dispute details and information given by the provider and determine whether you are entitled to automatic compensation.

We can’t look at the act of fraud however, as an example, we could look at whether the provider kept your account secure when fraudsters took out the contracts in your name.

We can’t look at any disputes relating to Netflix, Amazon Prime or any other streaming TV services. Television is not an electronic communications service and so we only deal with TV disputes for those companies who have allowed us to look at these.

You have up to 14 days to upload evidence to support your case. Log in to your online account to add more evidence here and visit the Evidence tab.

Log in to your online account here.

When your case was created during the call to our dispute support team, you were provided with a passcode to access your account. As an example, it should look like the following: CM123456-22

Passcodes are typically only required for cases when our dispute support team created the account for you. If you created the account yourself through the website, you shouldn't require a passcode. Passcodes needed for account verification are not provided by email.

The Communications Ombudsman is committed to making our services accessible to everyone. We have a variety of options available, including documents in alternative formats such as large print, coloured paper, audio and Braille. We also facilitate sign language interpretation. Read more about Accessibility.

If you’d like to complain on behalf of someone else, this option is available by continuing through our online process as expected.

Your username should be your email address, and you can reset your password here.

We can accept the following file types:

pdf, csv, txt, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, png, gif, jpg, bmp, mov, mp4, mp3, m4a, tif, tiff, msg

If you're not able to access certain areas of your online account or are unable to complete required actions, such as uploading evidence, please contact us by phone, or you can send any copies of evidence by post. You can find our contact details and report a System Issue here.

You can call our team to help you access your online account. For Communications disputes, call 0330 440 1614.

You can call our team to help you access your online account. For Communications disputes, call 0330 440 1614.

Let us know about any system issues by logging into your online account and sending us a message via our online form. Alternatively, please call us on 0330 440 1614.

An ombudsman is someone who investigates and aims to resolve disputes between customers and businesses. They typically work with these businesses to help improve the way their services are delivered, and future issues are handled - to improve long term customer service.

Ombudsman Services were a not-for-profit organisation established in 2002. They provided independent dispute resolution across the Energy, Communications and Private Parking sectors in the UK. In 2022, they branched into The Energy Ombudsman, The Communications Ombudsman and POPLA, as part of the Trust Alliance Group.

We are funded by the providers signed up to our scheme. They pay us a fee for each case we review regardless of the outcome or decision we make. This means that the more issues providers resolve in-house, the less they have to pay to us, which is an incentive to improve their customer service.

We are governed by a number of main bodies who oversee our work to ensure we remain impartial and everything we do complies with the latest standards. Click here to find out who approves and appoints our scheme.

We're approved by Ofcom (the UK Communications regulator) to handle disputes in the Communications sector.

We’re not here to punish either side of the dispute. We do not issue fines or dictate how providers operate.

If you disagree with our decision you may be able to appeal it. However if you are still unhappy with the outcome of your case, you can continue to pursue the matter in court outside of our service.

We resolve disputes between consumers or small businesses and communications providers that are signed up to our scheme. We are here to give free, independent and impartial decisions and resolutions on disputes based on the information provided.

Find out more about the types of disputes we can consider, review and potentially resolve.

We are free for consumers, however providers pay us an investigation fee as an incentive to improve their service. The more disputes they can resolve in-house, the less they have to pay us.

We can process disputes for domestic consumers, small businesses and not for profit organisations. For the communications sector this means:

• A domestic consumer is a person who has communications services provided to their home
• A small business consumer is a company which employs 10 people or fewer (whether as employees, volunteers or otherwise)
• A not-for-profit consumer is a company which employs 10 people or fewer (whether as employees, or otherwise but excluding volunteers)

Providers have 28 days to implement the legally binding decision we have communicated. After this time you are free to pursue the resolution legally outside of our service in court.

• We look at the dispute raised and the evidence submitted by both parties.
• We consider your consumer rights.
• We review the evidence against relevant legislation and expected industry practice.
• We make our decision.
• We recommend what can be done to put things right and issue a decision.

We only handle disputes involving providers trading in Britain. You’ll need to ask your provider directly who you can take your complaint to if it's based overseas.

Browse our list of other organisations and other Ombudsman schemes that also offer help and support.