The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) has released its report on customer complaints for the first quarter of this year.
The report reveals that 17,777 complaints were made by residential and small business customers including those in Wyndham about phone and internet services from January to March.
This number remained stable compared to the previous quarter, but it represents a nearly 19% decrease from the same period last year. Complaints related to internet services increased by 8.5% compared to the previous quarter. Of these, 13% were related to difficulties in getting connected to the NBN network and problems with service quality.
Additionally, complaints related to intermittent service or dropouts increased by 32% for both NBN and non-NBN networks compared to the previous quarter. Complaints about failure to cancel a service, slow data speeds, and billing for services and devices also increased significantly.
The TIO is concerned about the trend of financial hardship among consumers, and there were 433 complaints about this issue in the quarter. Most of these complaints were about mobile services. Mobile services were the most commonly complained about service type, accounting for 47.5% of all complaints.
Mobile complaints about misleading conduct increased by 12.8% compared to the previous quarter and 34.9% compared to the previous year. Landline complaints increased by 7%. Complaints about Optus decreased by 17%, while iiNet and TPG also saw a decrease in complaints.
However, all other top ten telcos saw an increase in complaints. Southern Phone had the largest increase in complaints, at 83.1% from a low volume of complaints.
