Car dealers, cellphone industry get most complaints, business bureau says

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Customers buying or servicing their new cars and cellphones had the most trouble and filed the most complaints in 2008, according to a report released today by the Better Business Bureau.

The cellphone industry had 36,710 complaints against it, while new car dealers came in second, with 27,555 complaints, said bureau spokeswoman Alison Southwick. That was a 9% jump in complaints for both groups compared with 2007.

Third place on the consumer-complaint list went to the banking industry, which received 21,021 complaints in 2008, a 15% increase, Southwick said.

Overall, customer complaints to the bureau rose 7% last year, she said, adding that as the number has grown over the last few years, the cellphone industry has remained at the top of the list. But that alone shouldn’t cause consumer alarm.

‘What you have to do is look at the complaint numbers and the consumer resolution numbers together,’ Southwick said. ‘For the cellphone industry, their resolution rate is at 91.8%. Banks resolve their customers’ problems at a rate of 96.4% and new car dealers are at 82.1%.’

The business bureau received about 4 million complaints across 3,921 industry categories in the U.S. and Canada last year, she said, and complaints filed to the organization were resolved about 73% of the time.

‘If you have a large industry with a large number of customers, you’re going to see a large number of complaints because you’re serving so many more people,’ Southwick said. ‘But these industries -- cellphones, new car dealers and banks -- are responding to their customers in a big way.’

The complete Better Business Bureau consumer complaint and resolution reports for 2008, and its annual compilations going back to 2002, can be found here.

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles