An iTWire publication www.itwire.com Editor: Stan Beer Wednesday 20 May 2020 FAULTY PHONES, NET SERVICE MAIN COMPLAINTS CommsWire (ISSN 2202-4549) is published by iTWire Pty Ltd. 18 Lansdown St, Hampton, Vic, 3188 CommsWire/Telecommunications Editor: Stan Beer Staff writers: Peter Dinham, Alex Zaharov-Reutt, Sam Varghese. Columnist: John de Ridder Advertising: CEO and Editor in Chief, Andrew Matler:
[email protected] • Tel: 0412 390 000 FAULTY PHONES, INTERNET SERVICES DOMINATE TIO COMPLAINTS Consumers and small businesses made 32,441 complaints about phone and Internet services to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) in Q1 2020 - with 70% of the complaints coming from users not having a working phone or Internet service. The TIO says that while the comparison of the total number of complaints for the three months, against the same period in 2019, shows a decline of almost 14%, complaints about phone and Internet services increased 13% against the second quarter of 2020. The TIO lists complaint highlights for Q3 2020 as: 32,441 complaints were received from residential consumers and small businesses Down 13.7 per cent against the same period in 2019. Up 13 per cent against the previous quarter. In the top 10 issues in complaints, “No phone or internet service” increased almost 70 per cent against the previous quarter. Internet was the most complained about service type for quarter 3. "Missed appointment" appeared in the top 10 issues for residential consumers, replacing "Termination fees". Faults and connection complaints made up 50.3 per cent of complaints for the period, compared to 47.1 per cent in Q2.