Consistently high volumes of telco customer complaints the 'new normal', disputes resolution provider says

The Telecommunications Dispute Resolution (TDR) mediator says it received 1925 complaints between July and December last year, similar to the same period in 2022, suggesting a high level of consumer dissatisfaction with their providers.

“Complaint and dispute enquiry volumes are remaining consistently high – these levels seem to be the new normal," the chairman of TDR, Barry Jordan, says.

Over half of customer complaints relate to billing issues, TDR's numbers show. As an example, the resolution provider says a customer had complained to the organisation about not receiving a promised goodwill credit, when in fact this had been applied but was masked by a complicated invoice with line-item errors.

Other customer complaints recorded by the TDR in the last six months of 2023 include:

Mobile connection complaints declined in the last quarter of 2023 to 314 reported to TDR, from 361 the quarter before. This is despite figures from analysts IDC pointing to the number of connections increasing by 93,801 in the last quarter of 2023, approaching 7 million. Per 10,000 connections, Spark registered 0.35 complaints with One NZ seeing 0.48 and 2degrees 0.52 with the average being 0.45.

For the country's nearly two million broadband connections, 2degrees saw more than twice as many complaints at 5.57 per 10,000 connections as the industry average of 2.32 for the last quarter of 2023. That number was down from 7.21 per 10,000 in the quarter before.

2degrees spokesperson Quentin Reade explained that the figures are reflective of change in the telco's call centre from mid last year, meaning initial inquiries reached the TDR that would normally be resolved internally, given the nature of the issues.

"Thankfully resourcing and process change has improved customer service and bought this number down in the subsequent quarter and we are confident this will continue to be positivity reflected in the next report," Reade said.

Overall, TDR said that it resolved or closed 19% more complaints in the last six months of 2023 than in the same period of 2022.

TDR is operated by mediation services provider Fair Way Resolution Ltd as the Scheme Agent. Membership in the TDR is voluntary for organisations that belong to the New Zealand Telecommunications Forum industry association, which covers the majority of providers in the country.