The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman welcomes the assistance package for low income families and small businesses announced by NBN Co today (Friday 17 April 2020).
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My time as Ombudsman has been both challenging and rewarding – in almost equal measure! But every challenge has presented an opportunity to learn, adapt, and grow.
When I started in 2016, we had reduced our complaint handling resourcing in response to a five year decline in complaints. We needed to rebalance the organisation to be really focused on delivering our fair, independent, and accessible service. We changed our organisational structure, and fundamentally shifted to empower our people and bring out the best in them.
The report reveals the TIO continues to see systemic issues involving one-size-fits-all processes, providers failing to meet or understand their legal obligations, and poor sales practices. These issues can lead to unintended consequences for consumers, including financial pressure and significant distress.
Residential consumers, small businesses and telecommunications providers will benefit from changes to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman’s Terms of Reference, introduced Wednesday 25 October, 2017.
The updated Terms of Reference strengthen the obligation on phone and internet providers to work with telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, provide information and comply with decisions of the Ombudsman to resolve a complaint.
The changes will also provide higher quality, more relevant, and transparent data that gets to the heart of problems faced by Australia’s telco consumers.
Improvements will be made in the areas of:
Between 2022 and 2024, the TIO's systemic investigation function identified concerning practices involving Optus’ sale of telco goods and services. The TIO found hundreds of consumers were supplied with products that they did not want or need, or were led to be believe were ‘free’. The TIO referred the conduct by Optus on three occasions to the ACCC.
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As set out in the TIO Terms of Reference, we handle complaints from owners and occupiers of property about: