CASE STUDY:

Elderly consumers and provisioning delay

The complaint

Jodie contacted the TIO about a delay in the connection of her grandmother’s telephone service. Her grandmother suffered from dementia and had moved into a nursing facility and needed a telephone connected to her unit. Jodie found dealing with the provider difficult. She had been told the service would be connected many times. She was told she could not speak with a manager and, when she said she was not happy with the provider’s response, she was not told about her right to complain to the TIO.

TIO response

The TIO was concerned about the lengthy delay in providing an elderly lady with a medical condition with a telephone service, particularly at a time when she may have required additional social contact with relatives because of her move. We asked the provider whether it had complied with the industry code which sets standards for how it handles complaints. We also asked the provider to examine its compliance with the Customer Service Guarantee (CSG) Standard. This compensates customers if their service is not connected or repaired within a certain time.

The outcome

Our investigation revealed that the provider had connected Jodie’s grandmother’s telephone at the wrong unit. Even when Jodie brought this to the provider’s attention, it still maintained that it had connected her grandmother’s phone. As a result, Jodie’s grandmother received $3 800 in CSG compensation and the company also wrote a letter of apology to Jodie and her grandmother.

Lessons learnt

It is important that telephone companies listen to their customers and carefully examine complaints, particularly where a vulnerable consumer is involved. Technical systems are not infallible and sometimes an investigation is needed to ascertain where there is an error in the system.

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