One year after the introduction of new legislation that required public service providers to have an electronic complaint book on their websites, most have not bothered, especially the Algarve’s water suppliers where 74% have failed to follow the law.
Consumer organisation DECO has looked at the websites of suppliers in the water, electricity & gas and telecommunications sectors to see if the suppliers had an electronic complaint book. The conclusion is that law is being pretty much ignored.
The DECO study covered the mainland and autonomous islands, and trawled through 392 websites, of which 62% failed to comply with the legislation.
The worst offenders were found in the Algarve’s water supply sector where, looking at 19 providers’ websites, 14 did not provide an electronic complaints book, a default rate of 74%.
In the energy sector, the default rate was 39% as of the 36 sites reviewed, 14 did not have an electronic complaint book.
The sector that stood out, for the right reasons, was telecoms where all of the suppliers’ websites provided the electronic complaints book.
However, both in the telecoms industry and in the others under review, finding the electronic complaints book was not exactly made easy. The legislation obliges companies to put the complaints book in a visible and prominent place on their websites, this generally has not been the case.
DECO has expressed its concern to the Consumer Directorate-General and to the regulators in the sectors it analysed - ERSAR, ERSE and ANACOM - and has called on the supervisors to do rather more supervision than to date.
