TIO Annual Report 2006/07

Priority Assistance

Priority Assistance is a service designed to help people with diagnosed life-threatening medical conditions who depend on a reliable, home (landline) telephone service to call for assistance when needed. Priority Assistance customers are entitled to faster connection and fault repair of their telephone service and a greater level of reliability than other customers. In urban and rural areas Priority Assistance customers are entitled to have a service connected or a fault repaired within 24 hours. In remote areas, the timeframe is 48 hours. Service providers must test a Priority Assistance customer’s phone service if they experience two or more faults in a three-month period.

Telstra is the only service provider required to provide Priority Assistance services to its customers as a condition of its licence, but some other service providers also offer Priority Assistance services.

Priority Assistance is a sub-category of the Disability complaint category.

The TIO takes Priority Assistance complaints under four sub-categories:

• connection, which relates to complaints where the customer said that their provider had not fulfilled the timeframes required under Priority Assistance (11 complaints recorded)
• fault rectification, which relates to circumstances where the customer said that their provider had not fulfilled its timeframes for fault rectification (25 complaints recorded)
• notification, which relates to circumstances where the customer said that their provider had not advised them of the existence of the Priority Assistance program and how they may apply for it (eight complaints recorded)
• rejection of application, which relates to complaints where a customer has had their application for Priority Assistance rejected (four complaints recorded). Customers must provide medical evidence in support of their claim for Priority Assistance. The TIO cannot review medical evidence and can only examine whether a provider followed its procedure in assessing a person for Priority Assistance.

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