More complaints from Canadian telecom consumers reached the industry’s arbiter than ever before in the past year.
The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services (CCTS) accepted 23,647 complaints between August 1, 2024 and July 31, 2025 from Canadian consumers dissatisfied by their wireless, internet, TV and telephone service providers, according to the CCTS Annual Report. This represents a 17 per cent increase over complaints in the prior 12-month period.
By service provider, Rogers remained the provider with the highest number of complaints, followed by TELUS and Bell. Rogers figures now include Shaw following the completion of that merger. TELUS moved ahead of Bell in the number of complaints, with 78 per cent more complaints than the year prior. Both Rogers/Shaw and Bell had complaint increases in line with the 17 per cent overall average.
CCTS uses ‘issues’ to study specific services or topics, as a single complaint will often have multiple issues. In the year studied, there were 43,397 issues among the 22,094 complaints investigated and closed.
By product, wireless services still account for more than half of all issues raised in complaints accepted by CCTS. However, issues related to TV services showed the highest increase, up 44 per cent from the year prior. Much of the TV issues related to billing (a 59 per cent increase).
By issue, billing problems remain the leader. Incorrect charges, missing credits and other billing problems account for 46 per cent of all issues raised in complaints. The fastest-growing topic was breach of contract issues (up 121 per cent), and regular price increases of monthly price plans (up 61 per cent). The breach of contract issues arose from promoted features being absent from contracts, unexpected fees, or mid-contract changes to terms.
The CCTS report said 86 per cent of concluded complaints were successfully resolved, a slightly lower level than in past years. Most resolved complaints were settled within 20 days.
The report also showed lacklustre results of industry efforts to inform consumers about CCTS, created in 2007 to handle complaints that are not resolved with the service provider.
Only 7% of complainants said their provider informed them about CCTS during their complaint discussions, down from 10% last year.
Similarly. 18% recalled seeing CCTS information on invoices (down from from 20% last year) and 23% saw notices about CCTS on their provider’s web site (19% last year.)
Also 46% of complainants reported going through three or more levels of complaint with the provider before contacting CCTS (down from 51%). Nearly half (42%) said it took them more than two months of dealing with the provider before they contacted CCTS.
CCTS also evaluates service provider conduct based on four mandatory CRTC codes of conduct. It found 70 breaches of the Wireless Code, up from 46, with TELUS having the most (25). There were 27 breaches of the Internet Code (up from 12), no breaches of the Television Service Provider Code (down from four) and eight breaches of the Deposit and Disconnection Code for local phone customers.