CASE STUDY:

Billing and customer service

The complaint

Mandy told us that her provider had updated its billing system but had failed to tell her that she had a new account number for her landline service. Consequently, payments she had made against her old account number had not been applied to her new account and her service was disconnected. Mandy said that she had tried to contact her telephone company many times but had to wait for long periods before she could speak to anyone and received inconsistent advice from different departments. Mandy provided bills showing that she incurred close to $250 in mobile phone charges trying to contact her provider and resolve the complaint. Further, Mandy was charged a reconnection fee when her landline service was eventually reconnected.

TIO response

We believe that if a telephone company’s customer service falls short it may be appropriate for it to refund excessive charges that a customer has incurred as a result of that poor service. In this case we also investigated whether Mandy was entitled to compensation for the company’s delay in rectifying what appeared to be an administrative error.

The outcome

Mandy’s provider responded by offering her an apology for the inconvenience she had experienced. It also applied a credit of $700 to her account, which covered the payments she had made to her old account, the mobile charges she had incurred trying to resolve the complaint, the landline reconnection fee and an additional $110 as a gesture of goodwill.

Lessons learnt

On occasion, administrative or system errors may mean that payments are not processed correctly. If a company does not resolve the error in a timely manner, one fair means of offering the customer redress might be to reimburse any fees the customer incurs.

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