The news comes as Vodafone announced it was laying off 500 employees due to a massive drop in customers, after a spate of complaints in recent years.
In his report released yesterday, the Ombudsman revealed a total of 193,702 new complaints were received in 2011-12, a decrease of 2 per cent on the previous year.
Complaints about mobile phones increased by 9.3 per cent however to 122,834 new complaints.
|
|
He said today complaints doubled about unexpectedly high bills - 15,752 complaints - and a 150 per cent jump in complaints about disputed internet usage charges - 10,556.
There are moves in place to make it compulsory to warn customers ahead of time about high bills, but these won’t come into effect until 2014.
The other most common complaints included poor coverage, with 31,465 complaints, mobile billing disputes, up 33 per cent to 13,943; and complaints about the quality of information given to consumers at the point of sale, 20,213 complaints.
Residents in Melbourne's CBD and Docklands made more complaints per capita than those of any other postcode in the country.
Other suburbs with problems included St Kilda, Campbellfield and Doreen.
Telstra seemed to buck the overall trend, with the telco registering 21 per cent fewer complaints. Optus saw the biggest jump in complaints, up 47 per cent, driven by mobile issues such as network faults, internet charges and inadequate spend controls.
Complaints against Vodafone rose by 11 per cent.
