By Asif Balwana -
https://bluecitycapital.com/news/articles/ex4xayuf17nk
Three employees have been formerly referred to OFCOM and
the ICO for misconduct, including obstructing investigations into
complaints over how employees made malicious abuse allegations.
Complaint handlers Ellie Butt, Martin Smith, and Jane Beldon have been referred to the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom, as well as the ICO, after they all demonstrated major failings in the way they handled investigations into how EE employees recorded malicious abuse allegations in a customer file. This was only revealed after the customer happened to make a DSAR, despite EE being unable to provide any evidence of these allegations.
“I made a formal complaint to EE, expressing my shock at how they thought I had abused them. I was prepared to apologise if they could provide any substantial evidence of communication that would have been deemed abusive or malicious in nature. Of course, I knew there was no evidence they could provide,” the customer complained.
We have also seen reports where Beldon, the initial complaint handler, simply said, “The evidence is in the correspondence you sent us,” before attempting to gaslight the customer by stating that they have a zero-tolerance approach to abuse. She later performed a U-turn and admitted that the customer had not been abusive towards her throughout the entire conversation.
Beldon also admitted that she was unable to provide any evidence of these allegations, before hastily adding, “because it’s not my role to do so.”
“The employee was clearly out of her depth,” the customer went on to explain. “She clearly had someone in her ear telling her what to write, not anticipating how I would challenge her to the extent that I did.”
We’ve seen one incident where a customer made a complaint back in August 2025. Executive complaints handler Ellie Butt suddenly took over from the colleague who was dealing with the complaint, before misleading the customer by stating that he had been advised he had one year to refer the complaint to the Ombudsman and that the complaint was over a year old.
This was not true. The complaint Butt referred to was an old complaint that had since been resolved. This was a new complaint, only a week old.
Back in 2015, EE was fined £1 million for grossly mishandling complaints. Between 22 July 2011 and 8 April 2014, Ofcom found that a number of customers who had requested a “deadlock letter” as a precursor to referring their complaint to the Ombudsman never received one. It also found that EE did not notify some customers on their paper bills that they could refer complaints to this body free of charge.
More recently, BT (of which EE is now a part) was fined by the regulator for failings by EE to provide at least 1.1 million customers with clear and simple contract information before allowing them to sign up. This forced the telecoms giant to refund all early exit fees and allowed affected customers to leave penalty-free.
So we can establish that this company is no stranger to regulatory fines. It is employees like Beldon and Butt who allow these regulatory complaints to slip through the cracks, resulting in fines, alienated customers, and distrust in the industry—as evidenced by EE’s 1-star Trustpilot rating.
Ellie Butt then refused to acknowledge that this was a new complaint and that the customer was well within the one-year timeframe to refer it to the Ombudsman. To this day, no deadlock letter has been issued.
Butt obstructed a thorough investigation into the customer’s grievances and failed to inform the customer that they could take their complaint to ADR after the (non-existent) investigation concluded.
It is evident that EE employs individuals whose conduct reflects poorly on the organisation.
Despite EE agreeing in 2025 that malicious communications were written in the customer’s file, complaint handler Martin Smith refused to correct this mistake. As a result, Smith has also been referred to the regulator over his failings in this incident.
Smith, Beldon, and Butt have demonstrated a concerning lack of competence within EE. As a company operating in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, it continues to employ individuals who fail to grasp that their actions could have serious professional consequences.
Although Smith did eventually (after months) advise the customer to go to the Ombudsman, no deadlock letter was issued, and he maintained that an investigation had already been carried out—despite no evidence of any investigation into the complaint (raised in August 2025) ever materialising.
Smith also failed to acknowledge his colleagues’ failings in identifying this as a new complaint and the opportunity to put it right.
The findings from Ofcom regarding EE’s conduct will certainly make for an interesting read.
Have you been affected by anything mentioned in this article and want to have your story heard? Contact us at press@bluecitycapital.com
https://bluecitycapital.com/news/articles/ex4xayuf17nk
