OTTAWA – Got a gripe with the phone company? Trouble with the Internet? An argument over data usage billings? You’re not alone.
A lot more Canadians than ever before are complaining about telecom services to a four-year-old watchdog agency set up to mediate between consumers and the industry.
The commissioner for complaints to telecommunications services says complaints jumped by 114 per cent in 2010-11 over the previous year, to more than 8,000.
The agency is an independent, industry-financed body established by the federal government in 2007 to resolve consumer complaints against telecom companies.
The agency says most of the 8,007 complaints it fielded this year were about wireless services and almost all of these were about billing errors or contract disputes.
It suggests that much of the increase in the number of complaints is due to growing public awareness of the agency.
It says the numbers are likely to increase as awareness grows and because a recent CRTC decision expanded the agency’s mandate to cover all telecom service providers.
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In its annual report, the agency said charges for data usage produce a lot of complaints from consumers who don’t know the limits of their plans or have no idea how much data they use.
The report urged the industry to take steps to increase consumer confidence in data measurements.
In an interview, Howard Maker, the complaints commissioner, said it’s important to build more “transparency” into the system.
For example, some companies notify customers when their data usage hits 75 per cent of the monthly limit and again when it hits 100 per cent. Others tell customers how much data is involved in various activities, giving them a way to gauge their usage.
The report says contracts also cause problems, with many complaints about early-termination charges. But the agency can only check the contract to make sure the charges are clearly detailed.
“As much as customers must be diligent in reviewing the terms of their contract before committing, service provider contracts must be clearly understandable,” said Maker.
The agency can save people money in some instances. In one anonymous case study included in the report, a business had its phone system breached by hackers who ran up $20,000 in long-distance calls.
In investigating, the agency found that the terms of service for the business phone didn’t clearly lay out the customer’s liability in such a case. The charges were eventually waived.
The agency gets high ratings from consumers who turn to it.
Maker said the idea is to work with both the customer and the business to resolve problems.
“This is a process that works best when it’s done in a co-operative way,” he said. “It’s not a court of law where everybody’s an adversary.
“We’ve been very successful. If you look at our stats for this year, 87 per cent of the complaints that we concluded were resolved to the satisfaction of the customer and the provider so I think we’re doing something right.”
He said there’s an incentive for providers to resolve complaints.
“All the research indicates that it’s cheaper for them to satisfy a current customer than it is to go out and acquire a new one.”
The agency looks at complaints about most telecom services, from home phones to Internet services, wireless services, long-distance service and even such things as pre-paid calling cards.
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