Landline, internet and NBN-related complaints rise

The TIO recorded 33,141 new complaints from January to March 2015, a 12.1 per cent rise on the previous quarter. The figure is still lower than the number of new complaints recorded in the same quarter in 2014 - by 8.6 per cent - or any other January-March quarters since 2007. 

“We received an increase in new complaints this quarter, but this is in the context of the continuing decrease in new complaints year-on-year,” Ombudsman Simon Cohen said. “Landlines, internet and NBN-related complaints all increased. 

Internet: New complaints about internet services rose to the second highest number of quarterly complaints recorded in four years. Consumers made 8,740 new complaints about internet services, an increase of 27.7 per cent from the October-December quarter and of 3.8 percent from January-March 2014.  

Quarter-on-quarter, new complaints about fully unusable internet services were up by 45.7 per cent from 1,249 to 1,820 and new complaints about delays in connecting new internet services were up by 41.5 per cent from 992 to 1,404.  

Landline: We received 9,305 landline new complaints, the highest quarterly number recorded in two years. This is 16.7 per cent higher than in October-December 2014 and 4.3 per cent more than the same period last year.  

Notably, quarter-on-quarter, new complaints about fully unusable landline services were up by 37 per cent, from 1,096 to 1,501 and new complaints about delays in connecting new landline services were up by 13.3 per cent, from 1,011 to 1,145.  

NBN-related: The TIO received 15.6 per cent more NBN-related new complaints than in October–December 2014 (1,635 new complaints). Connections continued to be the most common issue, reported in 44.8 per cent (792 cases) of all NBN-related new complaints.  

Fault issues: landline and internet fault complaints also increased, when contextualised against services in operation (SIO). There were 166 landline fault complaints and 138 internet fault complaints per one million SIO in February 2015. This is significantly more fault complaints than for mobile services, where there were 41 new complaints with at least one fault issue per one million SIO in February 2015.