Aussie broadband providers hit with flood of complaints

It has been reported that many of the major broadband providers in Australia have been receiving complaints over their levels of service amongst other things despite efforts to try and improve service levels.

According to a recent report consumers in Australia are making thousands of complaints each month to some of the country’s major telecommunications companies over their service levels as well as various other issues. One of the companies to receive the highest number of complaints was one of the country’s leading broadband and telecommunications providers, Telstra.

The figures suggest that consumers are making more than twenty thousand complaints each month to these broadband and telecommunications providers. According to industry officials efforts have been made to improve customer service levels but the level of complaints has continued to increase.

Amongst the other issues that were generating complaints, other than customer service levels, were billing problems, failure to cancel accounts and direct debits, and lack of information from these companies. The figures showed that the level of complaints for the 2008/2009 period increased by 1.8 percent.

An ombudsman official said that she hoped that complaint levels would start to fall, stating: “We’ve had two years where we’ve been the busiest ombudsman in Australia. Very, very basic stuff was not being done that drives the consumer crazy with frustration. We hope that part of the success of connect.resolve, which has been putting the spotlight on service, has raised awareness in companies that their customers deserve good service. Ultimately the customers will judge: if a company is giving them good service, there should be a reward in that, if they’re not, in a competitive environment choices can be made.”

Source – News.com.au