OMBUDSMAN FINGERS MOBILES FOR COMPLAINTS

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 26 October 2005

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) has tracked an increase in complaints of more than 30 per cent in the 2005 fiscal. Mobile phone services topped the list as thew fastest growing thing to complain about. This could be attributed to the growing number of mobile subscriptions says John Pinnock the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. “There are now as many mobile phone handsets in Australia as there are fixed lines,” he said “The TIO’s complaint statistics for the 2005 financial year generally reflect the increase in the number of mobile phones. However, some of the increase in mobile complaints has been because of higher than expected complaints about mobile handset faults.” The TIO investigated 78,915 complaints in 2005, 31.9 per cent more than the 59,850 complaints investigated in the 2004 financial year. Established in 1993, the TIO is a free and independent dispute resolution service for residential and small business consumers who have been unable to resolve a complaint with their telephone or internet service provider. Each complaint to the TIO may generate more than one issue. For example, a person complaining about billing may also lodge a complaint about a fault. The TIO logged 100,825 complaint issues in the 2005 financial year. 44.2 per cent of complaint issues were about landline services, 39.9 per cent about mobile services, and 15.9 per cent about internet services. Mobile services complaint issues rose by 87.5 per cent from 21,465 in 2004 to 40,254 this year. The leading categories of complaint were billing, contracts and faults. Faults complaints doubled from 3,692 to 7,379. Landline services complaint issues rose by 23.2%, from 36,167 to 44,559. The leading categories of complaint were billing, customer service and credit control. Internet service complaint issues rose by 54.1 per cent, from 10,388 to 16,012. The leading categories were billing, customer service and faults. Related news items Consumers Want FMC: Companies Don't See The Benefit -02/10/2007 Consumer Advice For Premium Mobile Services -03/09/2007 Sydney Airport Network Improved For APEC -03/09/2007 Telstra To Launch MVNO In NZ -12/08/2007 Now Every Kiwi Has A Mobile, What Next? -08/08/2007 Newer news items ACCC SAYS OPTUS TERMINATION UNREASONABLE -08/11/2005 OPTUS OFFERS SIM BACKUP -02/11/2005 VODAFONE 3G LAUNCHES -31/10/2005 TELSTRA MAY SELL HONG KONG CSL -27/10/2005 TELSTRA TARGETS ORION IN COURT -26/10/2005 Older news items 83% OF LOCAL COMPANIES OFFER VPN ACCESS -25/10/2005 US NUMBERS ON FIXED-MOBILE SUB -25/10/2005 VODAFONE 3G AFTER HALOWEEN -16/10/2005 DRAFT CREDIT MANAGEMENT CODE -09/10/2005 TXT HACKERS COULD CRASH CELL NETWORKS -06/10/2005 Tag This Now: