Telstra is finally heading in the right direction with customer complaints, according to the latest Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman annual report, but Vodafone, Optus and iiNet have all seen a major boost in consumer grievances.
The report found the number of industry complaints has reached a new record, with new complaints rising 18% to 172,682, with most of this attributed to higher amounts of smartphone use and service faults.
And although there are some bright spots – investigations have fallen and so have complaints over mobile premium services, landline and internet services – the TIO still said the result was “disappointing”.
iiNet saw a huge rise in the number of complaints, up by 173.6% over the year, with 2,974 new complaints. But managing director Michael Malone told SmartCompany this morning the complaints aren’t as bad as they seem.
“There’s no real surprises here. The only reason these complaints are up at all is because AAPT is included in there,” he says. AAPT was acquired by iiNet earlier this year.
“If you look at the figures, although the complaints rose earlier this year, now they’ve halved since then. They are in a decline, and we knew that we would have these complaints when we took the company over.”
Malone says the number of complaints are part of why the acquisition occurred in the first place – “so we could fix it up”.
Overall, however, mobile phones are at the heart of the poor results. There was a 609% increase in the number of complaints about poor coverage, and a 482% increase in the number of issues over dropouts. Complaints about bill totals jumped 52%, with a 9.6% rise in complaints about early termination fees.
The biggest offender was Vodafone, which say complaints rise by a massive 222% during the year, sparking 35,563 complaints. The majority of those were due to service faults, which occurred in the first half of the year.
The entire controversy sparked an apology from the company, which this morning once again released a statement reminding consumers it has continued to upgrade its network and introduce LTE technology.
VHA, which housed the Three brand, also saw complaints rise 40.5% over the year due to similar mobile problems as the two companies merged its services.
Optus saw complaints rise by 4.9%, with most of those due to mobile services. Complaints for internet, landline and mobile premium services have either remained flat or fallen across the major telcos.
These numbers come just days after the industry launched a draft code of conduct that promises to help customers better understand their bills and send them notifications of when they are exceeding limits. That draft was sparked by a warning from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which warned the industry to smarten up or face regulation within just five months.
Malone says the new code is an encouragement, although admits it won’t change many of iiNet’s current operations.
“From iiNet’s point of view, it hasn’t changed anything. The main difference is now giving customers notifications of bill shock… but we’ve been doing that since day one, even capping expenditure.”
Although Malone says some issues are difficult to stamp out, such as the current complaints about mobile roaming charge
“If you go overseas it can be weeks before we get billing records back. It’s easy to rack up an enormous bill, and then have a big delay between then and when your carrier gets it.”
Despite the overall 18% rise in new complaints, there are some bright spots.
Telstra, one of the largest offenders over the past few years, has seen its new complaints fall by 3.2% across all categories. And complaints about premium services have halved, which the TIO says reflects “positively on stronger government and industry regulation”.
TIO investigations also fell over the year, “demonstrating the effectiveness of the TIO’s referral and conciliation processes”.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
