Telstra mail mistake sees customer services restricted too quickly

Telstra breached consumer protection rules by restricting or suspending services of 5410 customers last year over non-payment, without enough notice.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said it had investigated the breach and made a formal warning. 

“Telstra’s actions prevented affected customers from making outbound calls except to emergency services or to Telstra,” the ACMA said in a statement.

“Some customers were also unable to receive calls except from emergency services or Telstra.”

Under the telecommunications consumer protection code, telcos must provide at least five working days’ notice, according to the ACMA.

ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said phone and internet are essential services, and urged telcos to be mindful of “current cost of living pressures” on “many Australians”.

“By limiting peoples’ services without notice Telstra likely caused these people significant additional stress,” O’Loughlin said.

O’Loughlin advised customers experiencing financial hardship to contact their service provider.

She said the ACMA would soon release a report about “customer financial hardship in the telco sector.”

In an investigation [pdf], Telstra said the issue was for customers it did not have a valid email address for, and where the only option was to send a notification via post.

“Telstra explained that it creates a customer contact list which is then forwarded to its mail house provider to generate the letters by post,” the ACMA noted.

“However an intermittent issue prevented the correct customer dataset (containing the customer contact list) from being uploaded in its system and subsequently forwarded to its mail house provider.”

Of the customers impacted, 5245 customers had services restricted and 165 had services suspended.

Telstra said 4283 customers “acted” - for example, by paying their bill - meaning services “were automatically resumed on average seven days after the restriction or suspension”.

However, over 1000 were restricted or suspended for a month, and 97 were referred to collections.