State of UK Complaints
Cross-industry findings from the census: 1,097,631 public Trustpilot reviews analysed across 3,913 companies.
Across 270,545 negative reviews that record both dates, the median gap between the experience and the review being published is 1.9 days — how long people typically wait, or keep trying, before complaining publicly.
What goes wrong most, everywhere
| Issue | Complaints classified |
|---|---|
| Support unhelpful | 51,119 |
| Support unreachable | 29,212 |
| Other | 21,283 |
| Faulty product | 18,397 |
| Account/app problems | 18,085 |
| Delivery failed | 15,803 |
| Billing errors | 14,183 |
| Not as described | 13,877 |
| Overcharging | 13,858 |
| Delivery late | 13,788 |
Complaint rate by sector (UK)
UK companies only — the US report is here.
| Sector | Complaint rate (recent windows) | Companies ranked |
|---|---|---|
| Telecoms & IT | 22% | 65 |
| Retail | 14% | 146 |
| Other sectors | 14% | 222 |
| Travel | 10% | 87 |
| Energy & Utilities | 8% | 74 |
| Banking & Money | 8% | 111 |
| Insurance | 6% | 74 |
Reply theater: who answers complaints with templates
Companies whose replies to negative reviews our automated reader most often classified as canned (generic template) rather than substantive. Minimum 20 classified replies.
| Company | Replies analysed | Canned | Substantive |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Express Global Business Travel | 57 | 100% | 0% |
| Check Into Cash | 25 | 100% | 0% |
| Strong Home Mortgage, LLC | 158 | 99% | 1% |
| PaysafeCard | 301 | 98% | 1% |
| Jet2holidays | 1395 | 98% | 2% |
| Oakbrook Loans | 65 | 97% | 3% |
| Tesco Mobile UK | 1668 | 97% | 1% |
| US Birth Certificates & Vital Records | 490 | 97% | 1% |
| SATURN | 52 | 96% | 4% |
| Acceptance Insurance | 22 | 95% | 5% |
| Moss | 79 | 95% | 5% |
| ACE Money Transfer | 949 | 94% | 3% |
| MedicareAdvantage.com | 95 | 94% | 4% |
| Thameswater | 391 | 94% | 6% |
| Vital Forms Direct | Vital Records Services | 762 | 93% | 2% |
Among all companies with at least 20 classified replies — the same population this table draws its top 15 from — those Trustpilot marks as using AI-assisted replies average a 50.4% canned-reply share (n=278); those it doesn’t average 38.2% (n=446). This is a correlation, not proof that AI replying causes more canned answers — companies already prone to templated replies may also be the ones adopting AI-assisted tools. Replying with AI assistance is not wrongdoing on its own.
Do company promises get kept?
These are reviewers who edited their review after a company reply that promised something specific. Counted below: how often that happened, tallied from 2026-08-23, when we began recording reviewers' original ratings — edits from before that date can't be measured, so they're excluded rather than guessed at. Most edits leave the star rating unchanged; a minority move it up, and a few move it down. The census sees only that the review was edited and how the rating moved, not whether the promise was kept. Promise types with fewer than 30 edited ratings are not shown.
| What was promised | Replies | Review later edited (of replies) | Edited upward (of edits) |
|---|---|---|---|
| contact | 43,740 | 0.5% (228 of 43,740) | 17.5% (40 of 228) |
| escalation | 12,954 | 0.7% (96 of 12,954) | 15.6% (15 of 96) |
| refund | 7,069 | 0.6% (45 of 7,069) | 17.8% (8 of 45) |
Dated snapshots: 2026-W46 · 2026-W45 · 2026-W44 · 2026-W43 · 2026-W42 · 2026-W41 · 2026-W40 · 2026-W39 · 2026-W38 · 2026-W37 · 2026-W36 · 2026-W35
All figures are computed from census-classified public reviews; they are not official complaint statistics. Complaint rates use unbiased recent review windows only.