Telco complaints grew 33.8% in 2H16

Complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) covering phone and internet services increased by 33.8% year on year during the final six months of 2016, according to the agency’s latest six-monthly update.

Residential and small business customers made 65,970 complaints against 324 Australian phone and internet providers during the period, the report shows.

Complaints about internet services grew 53.6% year on year, while complaints about mobile services were up 18.8% and complaints about landlines increased 32% over the same period.

Victorians and South Australians made the highest level of complaints per population during the period, followed by the ACT, NSW, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia and Northern Territory in last place.

The report also shows a 117.5% year-on-year increase in complaints about nbn services, but this rate of growth is slower than the rate of new premises being connected to the network. Among nbn complaints, 4309 were related to internet services and 3203 covered landline services.

Communications Alliance, the peak body for Australia’s telecom industry, has stated that while the aggregate number of complaints is “disappointing”, the figures do suggest that action by telecom operators is helping slow the rate of growth in complaints.

The body’s CEO John Stanton said operators across the industry have been working hard to analyse the root causes for the strong growth in complaints and modify processes and customer experience management practices to address these issues.

“Clearly, more remains to be done, and Communications Alliance is working closely with its members on these challenges. We have seen five years of falling complaint levels as a result of concerted industry action — dropping complaint volumes by close to 50% — so the recent setbacks reported by the TIO are a matter of serious concern and are being addressed,” he said.

“There is no doubt that the rollout of the nbn and the additional implementation challenges it brings have contributed to rising complaints, but it is pleasing to note that the growth rate in nbn-related complaints is slower than the rate of new premises being connected to the national broadband network.”

He added that the rate of new connections is growing across the industry and the TIO’s figures are not measured as a ratio of total services.

In a separate statement, nbn meanwhile noted that the rate of complaints covering nbn services has decreased by 30% when compared as a ratio of total connections.

There were 27 complaints concerning faults and 56 concerning connection delays per 10,000 premises activated on the nbn during the half-year period, down from 35 and 91 per 10,000 in the same period a year earlier.

“With about 30,000 households and businesses being connected to services over the nbn every week, an increase in the individual number of issues reported to the TIO reflects the acceleration of the rollout; however, from an nbn perspective, we need to continue to improve the consumer experience as we further ramp up,” nbn chief customer officer John Simon said.

“That is exactly why nbn is working in collaboration with retail service providers to better educate consumers and business owners about how to get the best experience possible from their internet connection while also improving end-to-end processes.”

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