Navigating financial hardship with your telco

When you’re experiencing financial hardship and finding it challenging to keep on top of your phone and internet bills, extra support and flexibility from your telco provider is vital. Through our experience helping consumers experiencing financial difficulties resolve complaints with their telco, we’ve come up with some tips to help you get the support you need.

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What is financial hardship?

Financial hardship can impact your ability to pay a debt or bill to your telco provider. Reasons for financial hardship might be sudden or ongoing, and may include:

• Sudden or chronic illness
• Unemployment and underemployment
• Domestic or family violence

What can you expect from your telco?

Information about their financial hardship policy - All telcos are required to have a policy explaining how they can help consumers experiencing financial hardship. It must be easily accessible from their website, but if you can’t find it reach out and ask for more information.

A financial hardship assessment - When you reach out to your provider for support because of financial hardship, your telco must assess your eligibility for hardship assistance in a fair and timely way. Your provider may ask for information about your financial circumstances to help assess the level of hardship.

Hardship assistance – Once your request for assistance has been assessed and approved, there are different ways your provider can help you work through financial hardship. These may include:

• Offering a flexible payment plan
• Moving you onto a lower-tier or prepaid plan
• Removing late fees or termination fees
• Restricting part of a service to keep the remaining services active, or
• Discounting or waiving a debt.

How to get the best support from your telco

• Tell your provider early that you may need assistanceContact your provider by phone or in writing as soon as you think you might have difficulty paying your bills on time
• When things change, tell your telcoYou may agree to a financial hardship arrangement, but find you still struggle to make payments when agreed. When this happens, tell your provider as soon as possible
• Request your financial hardship arrangement in writingRequest a written record of what has been agreed to make sure you and your telco have the same understanding.

When do you contact the TIO?

If you’ve contacted your provider and are still not getting the support that works for your circumstances, reach out to the TIO for support.

We hear from consumers experiencing financial hardship who may have experienced any of the following issues they can’t resolve with their provider:

• Unexpected disconnections or suspensions of an account
• Being asked to commit to a payment arrangement you can’t afford
• Lengthy delays in getting your request for hardship assistance assessed
• Not getting appropriate support from frontline staff
• Being sold products or plans they can’t afford