Photo: Roel Wijnants via Flickr
Mobile phone users are making fewer complaints to the industry watchdog than last year, according to the latest report by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.
For the 2013-14 period, the industry watchdog received 138,946 complaints – the lowest number for the past six years.
Telecommunications Ombudsman Simon Cohen said in a statement he was seeing a trend where less people were complaining about poor coverage, call dropouts and slow data speeds.
“Mobile faults almost halved in the past year, with 22,000 fewer complaints,” he said. “Investment in new mobile infrastructure is clearly a cause of this positive effect.”
Australian Communications and Media Authority chairman Chris Chapman said in a statement the numbers where encouraging.
“The 12 per cent annual decrease in new complaints is another positive sign that the industry is improving customer care,” he said. “It’s also encouraging to see that complaint issues about mobile network performance fell by 55 per cent since last year.”
The latest figures are particularly good for young people, who are more likely to use mobile phones than those who are middle-aged or older. A 2012 study by the Australian Communications Consumer Action network found 77 per cent of young people preferred to use a mobile phone, while half of people aged 55 and over still preferred to use a fixed landline.
Bucking the trend, however, was a substantial increase in complaints about excessive data charges.
This year the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman handled enquiries from 14,543 consumers who reported issues around excess data charges, up 27.2 per cent from the previous year.
Half of the complaints related to charges of more than $440. In 56 cases, consumers were disputing amounts between $10,000 and $50,000.
RMIT student Matilda Marozzi told City Journal said she had received excess data charges during the first week of a plan with Vodafone.
“As soon as I noticed I called Vodafone and said you can look at all my previous usage – I’ve never used one gig in the first seven days,” she said. “They gave me an extra 100 megabytes of data and didn’t charge me the extra money.”
Ms Marozzi said it was important for students to contact their telecommunications provider and speak up about excess data charges.
“If you don’t think you’ve used that data, then just call up and let the company know,” she said. “In my experience they’re wanting to keep their customers happy.”
