and the company where customers are happiest
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Vodafone has been rated Britain's worst mobile phone provider for the seventh consecutive year in a customer satisfaction report.
EE and Virgin Mobile are next on the unhappy list, while smaller providers, such as Utility Warehouse and Giffgaff, came up top for service and value for money.
The annual Which? report asked 3,683 members of the public how they would rank their provider for value and service.
(Image: AFP)
It found that the UK's biggest firms - Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three - ranged from average to disappointing according to their customers, despite supplying an overwhelming majority of the market.
That's on top of them all increasing prices this month , in an inflation-linked hike that saw bills leap by as much as 4.1%.
Vodafone had the worst overall customer satisfaction score (49%), with one in six customers telling Which? they would not recommend it to a friend or family member.
One in seven Vodafone customers also said they had received an unexpectedly expensive or incorrect bill.
It comes eight months after the firm added an extra £1 to one million bills - in a 'free security trial' that would renew automatically if not cancelled.
The figures also come two years after the firm was fined £4.6 million for two investigations that found it was mishandling customer complaints and failed to credit more than 10,452 pay-as-you-go customers who topped up their accounts.
Mobile networks rated Source: Which?
Elsewhere, EE finished second from last, having shared the lowest ranking with Vodafone last year.
One in seven EE customers surveyed pay more than £50 a month for their contract, making the network's low score for value for money unsurprising.
Nearly one in five EE customers said they find their monthly bill too expensive.
(Image: Getty)
O2 outperformed Vodafone and EE, but was still a long way behind the most highly rated providers.
Customers' top complaint was receiving unwanted and annoying marketing communications.
Not all customers were put off though, as over half appreciated the incentives and rewards offered by O2, such as its free priority service.
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The highest-ranking of the big four providers, Three, scored well for value for money but three in 10 customers said they had experienced very poor signal, and a third of those who had left Three in the last two years had done so to seek better network coverage from another provider.
However, 86% of customers would still recommend Three to a friend or family member.
Utility Warehouse topped the table this year, beating its rival Giffgaff for the first time.
Nine in 10 customers surveyed said they would recommend Utility Warehouse to a friend.
Customers rated its value for money as good or excellent - on the £10-a-month tariff, its customers get more minutes and three times more data than people on Vodafone’s 30-day sim plan costing £13.
Alex Neill, at Which? said: "The biggest providers are lagging behind smaller rivals who are doing a better job of giving customers what they want in terms of service and value for money. Customers who are fed up should look to switch provider as soon as they can.
"New reforms will soon mean that mobile customers will be able to switch provider by text message, which we hope will make it quicker and easier for customers to seek a better deal."
Help! I'm getting a poor service
When you sign up for a deal, you expect it to be a pretty straightforward process, ie you receive a service, and subsequently pay for it.
However, as the statistics above suggest, this is often not the case, with many customers receiving a poor deal that's not entirely benefiting them.
If you're in that position, there are a few steps you can take to address it.