TIO Annual Report 2005/06

Mobile service issues (overview)
52,119 issues raised

Mobile service related complaints continued to grow sharply, jumping from 40,254 in 2004/05 to 52,119 in 2005/06. Mobile-related complaints now make up 40% of all complaints, putting them almost on par with landline complaints. This increase can be attributed to strong consumer demand for mobile services including 3G technology.

Notable increases included the categories of Billing - up by half, from 10,095 to 15,210; and Customer Service - rising from 6,639 to 13,740. Contract complaints remained stable at 8,456 (8,490 last year). Faults, an area of concern last year, grew only slightly - from 7,379 to 7,416. This is still remarkably high when compared with internet and landline categories.

Credit control complaints stabilised this year, with 5,434 issues logged. Debt recovery issues still make up 60% of all complaints in this category, suggesting that the telecommunications industry is still referring a significant proportion of debts to collection agencies. The TIO has also received a growing number of complaints about consumers having difficulties making suitable payment arrangements with their mobile service providers. In this category there was a 36.9% increase in complaints about overcommitment. Complaints of this nature normally relate to consumers accruing unusually high charges in a relatively short period of time and without warning from their service provider.

Complaints about premium SMS charges were the stand-out issue in the Billing category this year. Last year the TIO logged 1,708 issues about premium SMS services. This year that jumped to 5,890. The TIO continues to receive a large number of complaints where consumers are disputing SMS charges on the basis that they did not knowingly subscribe to a service or that they have been unable to unsubscribe from a service and SMS charges continue to be billed to their account.

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