We are improving how we handle complaints

This information outlines what's changing and what these improvements mean if you already have an active complaint with the TIO.

Visit Our Fairness Commitment for more detail on the changes we’re making to better serve telecommunications consumers and service providers.

Why are we changing our procedures?

The 2022 independent review of the TIO helped us analyse how we handle complaints. We are now modernising our service to better reflect the changing telco sector and the consumers we serve.

What do these improvements mean for you?

These improvements strengthen our decision-making and streamline our complaints process.

Our approach will be tailored to your situation

We recognise everyone’s situation is different, and our improved approach to handling your complaint will reflect this.

Our team will be empowered to decide what the best next step is to resolve your complaint. We may decide to skip certain stages to get you the support you need or to quickly assess what is fair and reasonable, or we may decide to be flexible in our approach to support your preferred method of communication.

We will focus on the impact your phone or internet problems are having on you

When you first make a complaint with us, we will have more of a focus on the impact the problems are having on you. This means we may ask you for more information at the start of the complaint to help us decide what to do next.

Our complaint handling improvements will make it easier for us to identify people needing extra care and support, provide clarity about the types of complaints we consider to be urgent, and allow us to get a complaint escalated quickly within the TIO if needed.

The process to get to a decision is quicker

The new procedures reduce our decision process from three stages to two stages for all parties.

More rights to appeal our decisions

From 1 July 2025, you will be able to request an appeal if we decide to stop handling your complaint. If we decide to stop handling your complaint, we will tell you when you can request an appeal and what information you need to provide.

Our expectations of telcos are clearer

We have published guides on what we consider to be good industry practice for telcos. These Good Industry Practice Guides use existing laws and codes as a baseline, but our expectations of telcos may be higher, or tailored to specific phone or internet problems.

We are inviting telcos to tell us how they are engaging with you in our initial stages

We are inviting telcos to tell us how they respond during the initial stages of our complaint handling process, and to provide information that supports why their response to you is fair and reasonable. This process will remain voluntary while we make improvements during the trial, but telcos will be strongly encouraged to provide this information. In future, we may require telcos to do this on every complaint we refer to them.

Our new Issues Notice provides focus for the next steps of your complaint

If you and your telco are struggling to resolve the problem after the initial stages, our dispute resolution experts will send our new Issues Notice to you and your telco. This notice allows both you and your telco to understand:

• What we will/won’t consider as a part of the complaint
• What the core issues are that still need to be addressed
• What questions we will focus on during the complaint
• What you need to consider, including what information we might need and what your rights may be.

This keeps everyone on the same page. We will refer to the Issues Notice if we need to decide what a fair outcome is for your complaint.

What happens if I have an open or active complaint with the TIO?

The improved processes and procedures will apply to all complaints from 1 July 2025, including open or active complaints lodged before 1 July.

For most people, if you have an open and active complaint with us right now, you will not need to do anything different. We may use different words or terms, but our core function will remain the same.

For a small group of people with open or active complaints, we may need more information from you. We will contact you directly to ask for that information.

If you have received an email or letter from us asking for more information, please follow the instructions in that email or letter.

If your complaint is assigned to one of our dispute resolution experts and you are unsure or concerned how these changes may impact you, contact that dispute resolution expert directly for more information.

I have not raised my complaint with the TIO yet, what should I do?

These changes won’t impact whether we can handle your complaint. If you have spoken to your telco about your problem and have been unable to resolve it, please contact us on 1800 062 058 or make your complaint through our website.

What if I previously had a complaint with the TIO?

Most complaints are closed with our office because the telco and their customer have reached an agreement.

In some cases, we may have decided to stop handling your complaint because it was not a complaint we could handle, we tried to contact you several times and couldn’t, or we asked you for information and you did not provide it.

If your complaint was only closed recently for one of these reasons, you can contact us and we’ll explain what we need from you to handle your complaint.