With issues of consumer protection under the watchful eye of ACMA, the operator has been found to have dropped the ball on more than one occasion
Vulnerable customers have not been sufficiently supported: The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has accepted a court-enforceable undertaking from Telstra for failing to comply with its ‘priority assistance’ obligations. Under its licence conditions, Telstra is required to provide priority assistance to customers who have a life-threatening medical condition and to have systems in place to provide those customers with additional levels of service. However, an ACMA investigation found instances where Telstra failed to:
Send application forms and/or required additional information to customers who had enquired about priority assistance;
Initiate ‘emergency medical request’ procedures (e.g. fixing landlines quickly or providing an alternative solution); and
Follow processes for ‘enhanced service reliability’, which requires it to test a priority assistance customer’s telephone service if two faults are reported over a three-month period.
Telstra is now legally-bound to make improvements: The conditions of Telstra’s carrier licence aim to ensure that vulnerable consumers in Australia have access to a working fixed voice service and that any faults are repaired in a timely manner. In order to do so, Telstra must have appropriate systems in place to enable it to meet its obligations. However, in addition to ACMA’s findings, Telstra reported that it was unable to locate 740 records of priority assistance paperwork. Under the court-enforceable undertaking, Telstra will implement new systems to address deficiencies in its existing procedures and will also increase the monitoring of staff who handle priority assistance communications to ensure the correct steps are followed. Failure to comply with the undertaking carries the threat of legal action and could lead ACMA commencing court proceedings against the operator.
This is not the first time Telstra has dropped the ball: Telstra’s failure to meet its priority assistance requirements is not the first occasion on which the telco’s procedures and systems have been deemed inadequate. In December 2022, ACMA ordered Telstra to comply with consumer protection rules after problems with legacy IT systems meant it incorrectly began credit management action against 70 customers on a financial hardship arrangement. The regulator’s order came only months after it released a Statement of Expectations on how industry should treat vulnerable users, which covered key customer interactions such as selling practices and the provision of support for those struggling financially. Amid pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising cost of living, operators can expect greater scrutiny from ACMA on whether they treat consumers fairly and reasonably, and on how they embed a focus on vulnerability into their business culture.
