Complaints Lodged with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman

Each quarter of the year, the Communications Alliance publishes a Complaints in Context report. This report is composed of details about the number of complaints made by residential and small business customers regarding the telephone and internet services they are subscribed to. Nevertheless, it excludes mere enquiries made by these customers.

The latest report released by the Communications Alliance is for the April to June quarter of this year. The report represents the number of new complaints received by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) against the Services in Operation (SIO) for the participating service providers. With the report, you will be able to compare the performance of different service providers when it comes to handling customer complaints, regardless of their size.

It must be made clear, however, that services such as telecommunications goods, device insurance, and data sharing accounts, as well as paid email accounts, domain or web hosting, and internet protocol television (IPTV) are all not considered as SIOs.

Data Sources

The Complaints in Context report leverages data provided both by the TIO, as well as the participating providers. The TIO complaints are taken per 10,000 SIO while the SIO data is based on active telephone or internet services at the end of the second month of the quarter, including all residential and small business customers covered by the Telecommunications Consumer Protection (TCP) Code. The report, however, excludes all inactive, suspended, as well as cancelled services.

There are two ways of processing the data for this report. One is to aggregate it for all companies in a telecommunications group and another is to process the data as a separate figure for each RSP.

In calculating the new number of complaints per 10,000 SIOs of each RSP, the new complaints they lodged were divided by their total SIO and multiplied by 10,000. Conversely, to calculate the overall new number of complaints per 10,000 SIOs of all the RSPs, the complaints recorded for all participants was divided by the total SIO for all participants before being multiplied by 10,000.

Results and Interpretation

From the table, it is notable that of all the retail service providers (RSPs), Commander garnered the highest complaints per 10,000 SIOs. This encompasses all the services they offer, including mobile, internet or broadband, as well as fixed voice both in plain old telephone service (POTS) and over broadband. They bumped off Southern Phone who held the top spot in terms of the highest complaints per 10,000 SIOs in the previous quarter.

Nevertheless, even if Southern Phone has the second-highest number of complaints recorded for this quarter, it is notable that this number did not increase compared to the number of complaints they logged in the previous quarter.

On the other hand, amaysim garnered the least complaints per 10,000 SIOs, but this can be attributed to the fact that they only offer mobile services. Vodafone is also an RSP with the least number of complaints but they only offer mobile, internet or broadband, as well as fixed voice over broadband services.

Thus, when it comes to the RSP who offers all four services, it was Dodo who garnered the least complaints per 10,000 SIOs, with a number that is even lower than what this RSP has logged in the previous quarter. Optus, Aussie Broadband, and Telstra follow closely and it is remarkable how the complaints per 10,000 SIOs that these RSPs recorded did not increase nor decrease significantly.

MyRepublic also somehow remained stable when it comes to the number of customer complaints they have recorded even if their number made it to the top three spots. This is despite the face that they only offer the internet or broadband, as well as fixed voice over broadband service types.

iiNet and iPrimus both saw a decrease in the number of lodged customer complaints when compared to the first quarter of this year. Like Optus, Aussie Broadband, as well as Telstra, iiNet and iPrimus also offer all four service types. On the contrary, TPG, offering three of the four available service types, saw an increase in the number of customer complaints lodged this quarter.

Conclusion

Overall, the complaints per 10,000 SIOs recorded for the second quarter of 2020 garnered by all providers increased when compared to the previous quarter of this year. Perhaps the reason behind this is that the RSPs need to render their services to their customers who have been directly affected by the global pandemic. Thus, it is noteworthy to take into the next quarterly report and see whether there has been any improvement when it comes to the number of customer complaints received and recorded by the RSPs.