Telecommunications Consumer Complaints Continue to Fall
Sydney, 17 September 2014 – Further sharp falls in telecommunications consumer complaints – to a six year low – show that industry is delivering on its promise of a much improved experience for customers, Australian Telecommunications Alliance said today.
The TIO Complaints – the Year in Review 2013-14 report, released today, showed that complaints to the TIO have fallen by 29% during the past three years.
“This strong improvement flows from several factors including huge investment in new and better networks and the introduction of the revised and strengthened Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code in 2012 – but overwhelmingly it comes from a top-down commitment within our telecommunications companies to deliver world-class service to their customers,” Australian Telecommunications Alliance CEO, John Stanton said.
“Almost across the board we saw encouraging results in the past year – a 48 per cent fall in complaints about mobile service faults; mobile coverage issues down by 55 per cent; international roaming complaints down by 35% and sharp reductions in complaints about overall customer service and complaint handling.”
“Almost 90% of complaints are resolved by service providers without any TIO involvement and the highest category of TIO complaint investigation (known as a Level 4) has virtually disappeared, having dropped by 99.7 percent over the past four years.”
“The results are consistent with the Comms Alliance quarterly national polling which shows steady improvements in telco customer satisfaction during the past 18 months,” Mr Stanton said.
“Industry is not resting on its laurels – far from it – and is determined to drive complaint levels even lower again during the current year.”
He said the increase in complaints about excess data charges reported by the TIO needed further investigation.
“The TIO has not been able to give us much context around these complaints and the result seems surprising because consumers receive three usage notifications – at 50, 85 and 100 per cent of their data usage allowance – to give them a good opportunity to avoid incurring excess data charges. What’s more, many data plans these days include features to avoid high charges even if the allowance is exceeded, so we need to look more closely at what is driving these complaints, and will do so.”
ABOUT COMMUNICATIONS ALLIANCE
Australian Telecommunications Alliance is the primary communications industry body in Australia. Its membership is drawn from a wide cross-section of the communications industry, including carriers, carriage and internet service providers, content providers, platform providers, equipment vendors, IT companies, consultants and business groups.
Its vision is to be the most influential association in Australian communications, co-operatively initiating programs that promote sustainable industry development, innovation and growth, while generating positive outcomes for customers and society.
The prime mission of Australian Telecommunications Alliance is to create a co-operative stakeholder environment that allows the industry to take the lead on initiatives which grow the Australian communications industry, enhance the connectivity of all Australians and foster the highest standards of business behaviour.
Media information contact:
info@austelco.org.au
