Complaints about mobile phones now rank alongside dodgy car dealers in the top ten areas of grievances voiced to trading standard officers in North Yorkshire.

Now they are considering "naming and shaming" the phone companies responsible.

Every day North Yorkshire County Council receives calls alleging inaccurate billing, poor after-sales services and misleading advertisements.

Gordon Gresty, the county council's head of trading standards and regulatory services said: "Complaints about mobile phones now rank eighth in the league table of 75 complaint types.

"The number of complaints is rising which clearly shows that mobile phone companies are not matching their aggressive advertising with their after-sale services."

Many of the complaints involved fairly minor issues, he said, "which could and should be resolved fairly simply without people feeling the need to complain to us.

"Unfortunately from the consumers' point of view they are frustrated at not being able to get through to help lines and accounts departments so they turn to us for help."

His trading standards officers heard stories of consumers trying in vain to reach helplines, having to listen to recorded music for a long time. Even when told, companies often failed to sort out the problem or fail to answer or even acknowledge complaint letters.

Mr Gresty said: "It is not acceptable that these companies have a major marketing campaigns for new customers when in many cases they clearly can't handle their current client base."

He warned that if there was no improvement the trading standards would seriously consider "naming and shaming" the worst offenders.

He said: "I have made this quite clear to those companies concerned. It may be that the mobile phones and the various schemes on offer make it a fairly complex purchase but that's no excuse for poor after-sales support."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.