Every year, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) publishes a report on the state of telco complaints in Australia. It’s usually pretty grim. But this year, there’s been a little bit of a turnaround.
In 2021-2022, Australians made 79,534 complaints to the TIO. That’s quite a lot, yes, but it’s a 33.4 per cent decrease over the year prior. In numbers terms, that’s a drop of 39,866 complaints.
In its report, the TIO even says it’s impressed with the drop. But, it’s less than impressed with the rise in one type of complaint in particular: mobile services.
Complaints about mobile services now represent 39.7 per cent of the total complaints made, with poor mobile coverage continuing to be a consistent problem for consumers in most states and territories.
The report is a chunky 112 pages, so let’s break it down.
Of the total 79,534 complaints to the TIO, 68,546 were made by residential customers (as opposed to businesses).
Up until this year, the internet was the most complained about service, but now it’s mobile leading the charge. Mostly, customers were annoyed their telco didn’t take any action, or its action was delayed. Poor mobile coverage was also complained about a lot.
Complaints involving fault and connection issues continue to make up almost half of the telco complaints made to the TIO, at 49.6 per cent. This was slightly higher compared to last year’s 47.1 per cent.
Poor customer service and problems with a bill were the most common problems reported by consumers. The most complained about issue overall was no, or delayed, action by a provider (35,678 complaints), followed by service and equipment fees (23,169 complaints) and then no phone or internet service (10,265 complaints).
In 2020-2021, Telstra received 74,135 complaints. But in 2021-2022, that figure shrunk to 41,741. Behind Telstra was Optus with 15,708 complaints, Vodafone Australia with 4,836 complaints, TPG with 3,224, iiNet with 2,197 and Aussie Broadband with 1,133 complaints. Dodo, Southern Phone, Boost and Medion made up the remainder.
Complaints increased for Medion, Aussie and Dodo.
While nearly 80,000 telco complaints are a lot, everything is definitely coming up Milhouse.