Telcos' billing and usage information: a danger to consumers' finances, says ACMA

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 09 December 2010 13:41

IT Policy - Regulation

The ACMA has released a progress report on its 'Reconnecting the Customer' inquiry into how the telecommunications industry deals with its customers, concluding that billing and usage information on telecommunications services is inadequate and potentially detrimental to consumers' finances.

By and large the ACMA has avoided drawing conclusions in the interim report, which reviews issued raised in the consultation process to date. However it singled out billing and usage information as an area where improvement is urgently needed.

Consumers and consumer representatives told the ACMA of what they considered the 'root causes' of complaints, identifying these as primarily: a lack of accurate and clear information about a product or service at the time of sale: lack of progressive information on expenditure and inability to limit expenditure.

Th ACMA said it had not formed any view on appropriate responses to these 'root causes', suggesting that the Telecommunications Consumer Protection code review was likely to deal with many of them. It did however conclude that: "the quality of information provided to consumers, particularly about billing and usage, poses a real risk of financial detriment and requires improvement."

The interim report provides an overview of submissions and other information gathered to date, identifies the key themes to emerge and presents the main regulatory responses suggested by submitters.

The ACMA received more than 130 written submissions and 32 verbal submissions and says: "Themes which have emerged include the complexities of today's telecommunications industry, challenges facing disadvantaged and vulnerable consumers and concerns about the effectiveness of some aspects of the current regulatory framework to provide consumer safeguards - in particular the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Code (TCP code) and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) scheme.

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