Complaints against telcos reach a new high

Latest reports have shown the telecommunications providers have received record levels of complaints, with more than 50 000 complaints logged over the year regarding broadband, mobile phone and landline services of Telstra.

The annual report recently released from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman also revealed in its statistics that Optus, the closest rival to Telstra, had received less than half the number of complaints in comparison.

With recorded disputes totaling nearly 6000 being investigated by the ombudsman’s office, Dodo, one of the smaller service providers was also noted for the number of complaints against it.

An announcement that Dodo has also been fined $147 400 because of a number of breaches of the Do Not Call register regulation has also put this problem stricken telco in the record books with the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

In 2007/2008 there was an increase of 50 percent from the previous year of disputes handled with numbers totaling almost 150 000. Deirdre O’Donnell, the ombudsman, said she was disheartened by the sheer number of disputes that was ending up at her office that could easily have been sorted out by the telcos themselves.

She said “Many complaints are caused by basic customer care failures, such as providers giving callers the runaround through multiple transfers and hold queues, not responding to inquiries or simply failing to apologise for errors. Telecommunications service providers must do more to address these problems.”

Ms O’Donnell also said that the number of landline service complaints she was receiving was a serious concern with an increase of almost 60 percent, despite a reduction in the number of landlines. The number of landline complaints lodged came to over 54 000 in comparison to the 47 300 that were raised against mobiles, which are now have greater numbers than their landline counterpart.

Mobile premium services received almost 14 000 complaints with many of the complaints being received because consumers either could not unsubscribe or had not even requested the services they had been charged for.