Half of Australians have problems with their telco. But they don’t bother complaining

Many people who experience problems with their telecommunications provider do not bother making a complaint because they believe it would not make a difference, despite 55 per cent saying they had at least one issue with their telco service in the past year.

A new report by the Consumer Policy Research Centre for the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), polled a nationally representative sample of more than 2000 people on their interactions with telcos.

A new report says many consumers do not even bother making a complaint to their telco as they find the process too overwhelming.Credit: Glenn Hunt

It found close to one-third of those who made a complaint said their telco took longer than a week to resolve it. More than a fifth experienced unresolved or lengthy resolution times of more than 30 days.

The report builds on separate polling by researcher Roy Morgan of consumers on their level of trust in various industry sectors, with the telecommunications sector being the least trusted. Consumers distrust the sector for providing poor service and not being sufficiently customer-focused.

The Consumer Policy Research Centre report finds that the most common problems experienced by customers are intermittent service or service drop-outs, poor mobile or internet coverage, slow data speed and no phone or internet service for a long period.

“We heard from so many people who had spent days chasing up their telco, not getting a response, following up, then being told it will be fixed and then nothing happened,” says Erin Turner, the chief executive of the Consumer Policy Research Centre.

“There is this trust deficit that telecommunication companies need to fix; they need to follow through on their promises [of better service],” Turner says.

John Stanton, the chief executive of the Communications Alliance, the industry body for the telecommunications sector, says complaints about telcos declined by 60 per cent in the past decade, against a backdrop of ever-increasing services.

“Such a large drop in complaint volumes cannot be dismissed as simply a function of consumers choosing not to lodge a complaint,” he says.

“The telco sector is committed to better service and complaint handling, [as] it is a key competitive battleground,” Stanton says.

The Consumer Policy Research Centre’s Erin Turner says your chance of getting a speedy resolution to a problem is enhanced if you make it clear to the telco that you know your rights and options to escalate your complaint, including to the TIO.

The TIO provides a free and independent dispute resolution service for consumers and small businesses who have an unresolved complaint about a phone or internet service, after following it up with their telco.

Only a relatively small number of the survey respondents, after failing to get a resolution directly with their telco, said they had escalated their complaint to the TIO. Unprompted awareness of TIO among those surveyed was only 9 per cent.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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