Comms Alliance objects to draft complaint rules

The Communications Alliance has objected to a proposal by regulator ACMA to require operators to report complaints data to the regulator on a quarterly basis, stating that the proposed record-keeping rules would be “extremely costly” to implement.

ACMA’s proposed new complaint handling rules for telecommunications services would introduce the requirement to keep track of and report telecommunications complaints, in an effort to allow the regulator to monitor complaint levels and address individual providers’ level of responsiveness to consumer complaints.

But in a submission to ACMA’s request for comment on the draft rules, Communications Alliance — the industry body representing Australia’s telecommunications operators — said the draft rules would result in “extremely high costs” for providers.

The regulation impact statement released by the regulator, which estimated the cost of compliance at $1.49 million, was “entirely inaccurate”, the statement read.

In addition, the underlying differences in how providers have designed their various business models, customer service and complaint handling process would make it impossible to appropriately compare internal data, the industry body said.

The alliance also believes that the proposed rules would not contribute to improvement of the customer experience for either nbn or any other services.

The new rules could in fact have the opposite of the desired effect by increasing complaint management times, and by wasting resources dedicated to improving the customer experiences, the submission adds.

The Communications Alliance has proposed to instead expand the industry’s existing Complaints in Context report to provide consumers with comparable data on complaints received during a given quarter.

The most recent of these reports, released last week, shows that complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) increased to 9.3 per 10,000 services in operation during the March quarter, up from 8.7 during the previous quarter.

“This result highlights that our industry is still struggling with the disruptions caused by the rollout of the nbn and the transformation of communications delivery platforms,” Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton said.

“Though the numbers are very disappointing, we are continuing our work on customer-centric initiatives with government, regulators and consumer representatives to improve the overall customer experience.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/tashatuvango

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