From the TIO: The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) has released complaints statistics for the first three months of 2013.
The TIO’s summary of the statistics is as follows:
The TIO received 40,021 new complaints between January and March 2013, an increase of 4.5 per cent when compared to the previous quarter, and a 23.3 per cent decrease when compared with the same period in 2012.
Mobile complaints
New complaints about mobile services increased by only 0.7 per cent to 22,918 in the quarter. This is 29.2 per cent less than at the same time in 2012, when 32,357 complaints were received.
Most issue types for mobile complaints have increased from the previous quarter. All categories have decreased compared to the same quarter in 2012.
Mobile coverage continues to be the most common issue in mobile complaints, with 6,502 new issues between January and March 2013. Issues about mobile coverage were 12 per cent fewer than in January–March 2012.
Landline and internet complaints
New complaints about landline and internet services have increased substantially this quarter, but both types of complaints are less than at the same time last year. Landline complaints increased 8.8 per cent to 8,671 and internet complaints increased 12.4 per cent to 8,041.
The main reason for these increases is complaints about fault and connection issues compared to the previous quarter. This includes:
- internet services that are slow or drop out (up 18.8 per cent to 2,026 issues, and equal to the same period in 2012)
- landline or internet services that are fully unusable (up 58.9 per cent to 2,507 issues, and up 12.4 per cent on the same period in 2012)
- delays in connecting new landline and internet services (up 25.4 per cent to 2,339 issues, and up 40.1 per cent on the same period in 2012).
High demand in TIO services
There has also been increased demand for TIO services since late February 2013. In the last week of February, the TIO received more than 7,000 calls and emails, and registered almost 4,000 new complaints. This is close to 1,000 calls and emails more than our weekly average for the previous six months. The increase in demand has reduced the timeliness of some of our services.
You can read more from the TIO here.