Online retail dominates Resolver Covid hit customer complaints research

Resolver, a UK-based customer issue resolution service, has revealed what 900,000 people complained about during the coronavirus outbreak.

Online shopping dominated the research with 267,141 complaints, up 138% on the previous year.

Despite being shut for large portions of the past year, high street shopping complaints only dipped by 8% to 65,501 cases.

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Package delivery was the second most complained about sector, with 91,906 cases. A further 111,150 about deliveries were made against online retailers.

Negative feedback about takeaways, meanwhile, increased by 42% as the nation collectively dined in. The 26,506 cases were split between restaurants and delivery firms and online ordering services.

Resolver’s Chief Executive, Alex Neill, says: “The pandemic has changed life for everyone and its impact on our behaviour, how we live and how we engage with services is here to stay.”

“Given the upheaval, it’s extraordinary that complaints remain at record levels - and it’s worrying that the things people sought help with have transformed too, involving increasingly serious issues.”

“Looking back over the last year, we can see that people showed remarkable patience and restraint when faced with the challenges of lockdown. Only immediate problems like refunds for holidays and flights drove the initial surge in complaints.”

“But as the year wore on, we saw patience turn to frustration across numerous sectors. Hundreds of thousands of people began to struggle as some businesses stopped playing by the rules and started making it much harder to contact them to complain.”

He concludes: “Customer service and consumer rights are non-negotiable, so in the year ahead, we want to see more action taken against businesses and sectors that don’t play ball.”