The industry rules prescribe that telcos must meet agreed timeframes around landline connections and repairs. If not met, customers are entitled to compensation.
If a telco does not beat the deadline, it has 14 days to assess if it will accept liability to pay the required compensation.
The ACMA found that from July 2017 to June 2021, Telstra failed to pay compensation within the 14-day time limit for over 67,000 occasions.
ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said telcos accepting compensation liability is a key step in customers being treated fairly.
“Telco customers are entitled to compensation to make up for delayed connections or fault repairs of their landline. Telstra has let down its customers by not paying compensation in a timely manner,” O’Loughlin comments.
Telstra has now paid affected customers more than $11 million in compensation. As such, it complied with ACMA’s ruling to implement an improved payment assessment solution to pay customers on time.
Telstra is also required to regularly report to the ACMA on its compliance with the compensation rules for the life of the two-year undertaking.
The ACMA investigation found Telstra’s conduct failed to comply with obligations under the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999.
“Telstra knows it has had a problem with its internal systems and processes, uncovered through its T22 business strategy. The company has self-reported this and other recent breaches.”
“It is critical that Telstra addresses these longstanding issues in building new systems and processes and, where it is obligated to, compensates its customers for historical breaches of telco rules.
“The ACMA will continue to monitor Telstra’s progress on its work to update systems and processes so that future non-compliance and the associated negative outcomes for consumers are a thing of the past,” said O’Loughlin.
Following this review, a Telstra spokesperson told CommsWire they are in the process of improving the system to better automate payments.
“Telstra self-reported this issue to the ACMA and all customers have been paid. I’d also add that these are not refunds, it’s money that we always intended to pay, we just took too long to do it,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said it paid its dues promptly when they assessed the situation.
“We also conducted a thorough investigation to identify whether there were other instances where data did not flow. This led to the notification of the additional incidents.”
Last April, CommsWire reported that Telstra refunded more than $1.73 million and paid a $506,160 infringement notice after it overcharged thousands of its customers. Telstra said they encountered such errors because of its IT systems.
This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 27 May 2022.
