Last month, we reported on some research released by mobile games portal GetJar, which claimed that more than a third of mobile games bought and downloaded in the UK don't work due to compatibility problems.

The company suggested developers and operators should do more testing to alleviate the problem – a controversial suggestion, given the amount of time and money these companies already put into porting and testing mobile games.

We thought it was only fair to ask the operators for their responses, and unsurprisingly, they weren't impressed.

"I was a little surprised to see the figures they were quoting," says Neil Holroyd, who recently moved from T-Mobile to Orange as head of games and gambling.

"We don't see anywhere near that kind of volume. But the first thing to talk about is what counts as a fail? In the eyes of a consumer, failure can take many forms, but for operators, it's just to do with the download. Our own errors are very infrequent: they're less than 1 per cent of the actual download errors."

How so? Holroyd says that some problems aren't the operator's fault. For example, if someone tries to buy a mobile game but doesn't have enough credit left on their pay-as-you-go account, or not having enough memory on their phone to actually install the game.

There are solutions, sort of, to both problems. "In France, if the error code is 'insufficient funds', we'll recommend a lower priced product," he offers.

"We're seeing if we can do that in the UK, too. We're not able to confirm the phone's memory prior to the commencement of the download though, so the best we can do in that situation is not charge the customer."

3's Xavier Louis was also keen to give us his views, claiming that operators aren't the villains when it comes to downloaded games not working. "I'm a bit surprised at such a big number of fails but, yes, it does happen," he begins.

"But I guess it depends on the channel used to download mobile games. We at 3 UK pride ourselves at making sure all games downloaded by our customers are working absolutely fine. But I do believe a few customers are ripped off and are facing incompatibility when downloading games from untrusted channels which do not really care about the customers."

When it's games they've sold themselves, the operators have clear policies in place if something goes wrong. Louis says 3 checks all customer complaints about games, and automatically refunds the price where there's been a fault.

The operator also takes games off its portal for further testing and correction when a problem is found. Holroyd points to similar policies at Orange, saying that for the operators, customer service is all-important.

The comments from both Holroyd and Louis reveal a nuanced argument. Neither is denying outright that a number of mobile game downloads 'fail' from the downloader's point of view.

Instead, they're more saying a) if a game downloaded from an operator portal doesn't work, it can be through reasons out of the operator's control, and b) game downloads from off-portal firms can be unreliable.

In fact, Louis almost agrees with GetJar on the need for developers to work harder on the porting of games, to ensure they work properly.

"It has improved over the past years, but we have to admit that the quality of games delivered still varies a lot depending on the publisher," he argues. "We are far from happy overall about the quality of the games (e.g. bugs) delivered to us."

The short message, though, is that if you buy a mobile game from your operator and it doesn't work – for whatever reason – they'll give you your money back or help you download a working version.

Significantly, GetJar's survey showed a reluctance among users to complain, however. This could be because they're simply not that fussed about throwing away a fiver, or because it's not clear and simple enough to complain at the time of the download. And if the latter, it's certainly something that should be addressed.