New figures from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) show that Australian telcos received fewer complaints in 2023-24 but took longer to resolve those complaints.
In the last financial year telcos received 899,691 complaints, down from more than a million in 2022-23. However, the time taken to resolve those complaints increased to an average of 6 days, up from 5.2 the previous year.
ACMA member and consumer lead Samantha Yorke said telcos need to do more to prioritise fixing their customers' problems.
"The time taken to resolve complaints is going in the wrong direction, which is very frustrating for telco customers," Ms Yorke said.
"People need to feel confident that their telco services will work as expected, and that when something goes wrong, effective and timely action will be taken by their telco to fix it.
"Whether the complaint is about a phone or broadband service, potentially impacting people's ability to work or connect with family and friends, or incorrect charges being applied, or other issues, telcos need to act quickly to rectify the problem and we would like to see a greater focus on this across the industry."
The number of complaints that were not resolved by telcos and had to be escalated to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) remained steady at just over 6 per cent.
Consumers who want to make a complaint are advised to contact their service provider in the first instance. If the complaint is not resolved by the provider, the consumer can contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) to seek help settling their dispute.
The full telco complaints report 2023-24 contains customer complaints data for the top 34 Australian telcos by services supplied and has been published on the ACMA website.
Following recent legislative changes, for the first time the ACMA will be publishing information about the performance of individual providers, including tables ranking the telcos against key performance metrics. This will commence with the July - September 2024 data and is expected to be released in November 2024.
