ACCAN pans ACMA mobile capped plan study, and AMTA's response

Stuart Corner
Friday, 28 May 2010 16:39

Your IT - Mobility

 

The ACMA has released a study into mobile capped plans that, according to AMTA "finds a high level of customer satisfaction and awareness of what is included in capped plans." ACCAN disagrees, saying there are widespread problems with capped plans.

 

The ACMA report 'Mobile capped plans: Consumer attitudes and behaviours' is based on a telephone survey of 1305 mobile users conducted in March and April 2009 by Ipsos MediaCT for ACMA.

 

The ACMA found that 58 percent of respondents had exceeded their cap expenditure limit at least once in the last year. Among the survey sample, reasons given for dissatisfaction across all mobile services included: reception/coverage issues 54 percent; too expensive 18 percent; bad customer service 17 per cent.

ACMA estimates that 39 percent of Australians aged 15 and above have a capped plan. "Users of mobile capped plans indicated high levels of satisfaction overall with their mobile service, at 81 percent," it said.

However the ACMA noted that: "despite these high levels of overall satisfaction, dissatisfied customers are complaining [to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman] about aspects of their mobile service in increasing numbers." It was not able to extract from TIO data any indication of how many of these complaints related specifically to capped plans.

ACCAN's policy and campaign director, Elissa Freeman said: "The term 'cap' is completely misleading because most people wind up spending more than they sign up for'¦What ACCAN would like to see are 'hard caps' - caps that stop consumers going over the monthly spend they have signed up for."

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