Telstra admits to overcharging some NBN customers over unattainable speeds, will offer reimbursement

IF YOU have an NBN connection provided by Telstra and your speeds haven’t been up to scratch, you might be up for a refund.

TELSTRA has admitted that a fraction of its customers who bought home broadband plans provided over the NBN paid for speeds that couldn’t be delivered.

A number of factors can determine the performance of your home internet but some Telstra customers who opted for the top maximum speeds available of 100Mpbs were paying for something they couldn’t obtain, according to a Telstra executive.

In a blog post Thursday the company’s head of retail Kevin Russell said the telco had recently reviewed the speeds its customers were getting on NBN packages.

“While the vast majority are receiving the speeds they signed up for, we believe a small number of our NBN customers (approximately 1 per cent) are not,” he wrote.

“While it is important that our customers are aware of the factors that contribute to the speed they are able to get on the NBN, it is also critical that they are getting the speeds they signed up for.”

Mr Russell said Telstra was currently in the process of contacting those customers who were over paying for their internet service in order to move them “to a speed tier their NBN service supports”.

Those customers identified will be eligible for a refund from Telstra.

“In any cases where we believe that customers may have paid for a speed boost they haven’t benefited from, we’ll be reimbursing the charges.”

About two million premises have connected to the NBN but the company’s chief executive Bill Morrow has previously said a majority have not chosen the top tier speeds currently on offer.

The move from Telstra comes just over a month after the Federal Government urged the country’s top consumer watchdog to investigate Telstra and Optus to see if they had broken the law by selling expensive NBN access for speeds they knew couldn’t be achieved.

In a letter sent to the head of the ACCC, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said retailers of NBN services knew the technical capability and congestion level for each line they offered for sale and it was concerning that some ISPs may not have disclosed realistic broadband performance to their customers.

News of the letter was reported by News Corp Australia in early April. At the time Telstra said it would “play a part in ongoing” industry discussions on the matter while an Optus spokesperson said the telco didn’t make speed guarantees and each speed tier it offered was “not indicative of the speed that customers will experience at all times”.

At the same time the government announced $7 million in funding for the ACCC to establish a broadband monitoring program to help consumers better understand their broadband performance and compare providers. The program will remotely test about 4000 households and determine typical speeds on fixed-line NBN services at different times of the day.

Telstra said it was “actively participating” in the work the ACCC was doing.

The major telco also announced the launch of its own online guide to help customers understand the factors that influence their internet speeds on the new national network, including tips such as the best place to put your modem.

“Today we’ve introduced a guide that we hope will help customers understand the factors that influence their internet speeds on the NBN,” Mr Russell wrote.