Most complained-about telcos revealed in Communications Alliance report

The most complained about telecommunications providers have been revealed in the first ‘expanded’ Complaints in Context report by the Communications Alliance.

On average, telcos received 6.8 complaints per 10,000 services in operation (SIO) to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) from July to September 2019.

MyRepublic received the most complaints of the telcos included, with the TIO seeing 42.2 complaints per 10,000 SIO.

Following this was Southern Phone at 25.3 complaints per 10,000 SIO, followed by M2 Commander at 17.2, then iiNet at 15.9.

Next was TPG at 9.8, followed by Optus at 7.3 and Telstra at 7.2.

Below the average were iPrimus at 6.0, Dodo at 4.0, Vodafone at 2.5, Pivotel at 0.5 and Amaysim at just 0.2 complaints per 10,000 SIO.

This expanded edition of the report follows changes to the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Code, which came into effect in August, where the top 10 recipients of TIO complaints from the last financial year must be included, along with any volunteering telcos.

"By expanding the Complaints in Context report, Industry is providing consumers with comparable and contextualised customer service performance results that cover the vast majority of the Australian marketplace," said John Stanton, CEO of the Communications Alliance CEO.

"The previous voluntary participants - Amaysim, Optus, Telstra, Pivotel, and Vodafone - have been joined by seven additional providers, giving consumers the most comprehensive tool ever created in Australia to directly compare the performance of all the major players."

In the TIOs latest quaterly complaints report released in October, it revealed that residential consumers and small businesses made 32,801 complaints in period between 1 July 2019 to 30 September 2019, a 6.3 per cent rise year-on-year.

Almost half of these — 15,925 — related to fault and connection complaints, while more than a third of complainants cited no or delayed action by the provider as their primary grievance.

Service and equipment fees were second on the list of complaints, sitting at 10,500, while a delay in establishing a service was the third most pressing issue at 4,500 complaints.

Year-on-year, gripes about fault and connection issues about the NBN increased by 45 per cent, reaching 4,621 in the internet services category.

In the multiple services segment, NBN complaints also rose marginally to 2,988, accounting for 72 per cent of complaints against non-NBN broadband providers.