A Macquarie Telecom official has slammed the response of the telco industry to the latest complaints figures from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, saying it showed a dangerous level of complacency.
The figures, released today, show 112,518 new complaints in the last financial year. Mobile complaints fell, but Internet and NBN complaints rose sharply.
Macquarie Telecom group executive Luke Clifton said instead of focusing on the "alarming" 25% increase in complaints in the last quarter of the year, the industry response had been to congratulate itself on a year-on-year fall of less than 10%.
He said regulators and policymakers would soon have to "call time" and take more robust measures to protect customers.
{loadposition sam08}"The absolute number of complaints – more than 112,000 – remains eye-popping and the horror last quarter spike means no-one in the industry should be looking for silver linings," Clifton said.
"Industry leaders continually talk about customer focus, while cutting investment in service, which means the industry has no reservoir of goodwill in the community as the unavoidable disruption of the transition to NBN begins to peak," he added.
Clifton said he had warned many months ago that the industry was running out of time to build confidence with consumers before millions moved their fixed-line services to the NBN.
"With a network change on such a scale, there will undoubtedly be some unexpected problems, and the rise in NBN-related complaints in the TIO figures show that this moment is now upon us.
"But this industry continues to insult customers by focusing on the 'good news' when it should be acknowledging continuing disgraceful levels of complaints.
"Banks, with around a quarter of complaints to their industry watch dogs, are facing calls for a royal commission."