How telcos must deal with your NBN complaints

There are rules that telcos need to follow when dealing with your complaints. These rules are set out in the Telecommunications (Consumer Complaints Handling) Industry Standard 2018.

The rules say that telcos must: 

• try to fix your complaint when they first speak to you
• fix urgent complaints within 2 working days
• tell you how they will fix your problem within 15 working days
• have a written complaints handling process available for you to read 

All companies involved in providing the NBN should work together to help fix problems.

These rules also cover how telcos must deal with any delays in resolving your complaint. These rules say that telcos must: 

• tell you there will be a delay as soon as they know they can't fix the problem on time
• the cause of the delay
• how long it will take to fix the problem
• that you can contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) to help resolve your problem where delays are going to take longer than 10 days to fix 

In most cases your telco should be the one to fix your NBN service issue. If that doesn’t resolve the problem, you can take your complaint to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO). The TIO has powers to resolve complaints.

We monitor the telecommunications industry and investigate telcos that break the rules.

If we find that a telco has broken the rules, we may apply a penalty or start court proceedings.