1 week Ago By Peter Holmes
More than 13,000 complaints were made to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) between July and September this year. The TIO noted that a rise in unresolved cases of 30.3 per cent since the last quarter, bringing the total to 3,839 cases, was “due to a change in in the TIO’s process, whereby the TIO now pro-actively contacts consumers within ten business days to confirm if their case has been resolved”.
“Complaints in relation to landline services have risen by 6.8 per cent (an additional 59 complaints), followed by mobile services, which have risen by 3.4 per cent (an additional 199 complaints),” the TIO said.
The latest data from the TIO shows that the 13,541 complaints represented a 0.2 per cent decrease over the previous quarter, but a 4.6 per cent increase compared to the same quarter last year.
There were increases in complaints in categories including “Failure to cancel a service”, “Service and equipment fees” and “Slow data speed”. Complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. Failure to cancel a service saw the largest rise, with a 7 per cent increase.
Complaints from residential consumers made up 89.2 per cent of total complaints, an increase of 0.3 per cent compared to the previous quarter.
Tasmania recorded the largest increase in complaints, rising by 21.4 per cent to a total of 233 complaints. “This increase can be partly attributed to the weather-related outages in August and September, which left over 30,000 TasNetworks customers without power,” said the TIO.
“As a result, there was a 50 per cent rise in complaints about no phone or internet service, a 40 per cent increase in service and equipment fee issues, and a 36.5 per cent rise in complaints about no or delayed action by providers during the quarter.” A total of 38,740 “contacts” were made with the TIO, with 22,714 received online and 16,229 via phone calls.
The top five LGAs with the highest number of complaints were Brisbane (426), Gold Coast (279), Moreton Bay (251), Sunshine Coast (199) and Wyndham (198). Together, these five LGAs contributed 10.1 per cent of all the complaints received in Q1.
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