Complaints about MVNO Vaya have risen 288% in the past 12 months, according to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), bucking an industry wide trend towards fewer complaints about mobile services.
In its 2015 Annual Report, the TIO notes that the number of complaints received by the Ombudsman about mobile phone services has decreased 21.1% compared with the same period last year. 75 percent of these complaints are made by Telstra, Optus and Vodafone customers; a not unreasonable figure when you consider that over 80 percent of Australian mobile customers are subscribed to one of these three operators.
More concerning is the number of complaints made by customers of MVNO Vaya. By the TIO’s numbers, there were 1,635 Vaya subscribers who lodged complaints after failing to resolve issues with the telco itself. This is more complaints than competitor MVNOs amaysim, Aldi Mobile, TPG and Boost Mobile combined.
It represents a 288 percent increase in the number of complaints received about Vaya from the previous year. By comparison, complaints about Vodafone dropped 43 percent, about Virgin Mobile dropped 38 percent and Telstra 4.3 percent.
According to the TIO report, the bulk of these 1,635 complaints are about excess data charges, billing disputes and usage notifications.
As a mitigating factor, the TIO includes in its report that Vaya’s customer base has increased by 174 percent in the two years since July 2013. But should more customers equal a sharp increase in complaints?
Well above average
To give these figures more context, it is worth comparing the number of complaints to the scale of each business. The TIO released information back in May where participating telcos allowed the TIO to publish a ’New Complaints by 10,000 Services in Operation’ comparison.
Though only 5 telcos participated, the TIO found that the average number of complaints per 10,000 SIOs was 7.2.
Vaya’s customer base was 70,000 back in June of 2013, so after its 174 percent increase, its total customer base is roughly 192000. With 563 complaints in the same January to March quarter used for the TIO comparison, Vaya received 28 complaints per 10,000 SIO — or 4 times the average.
This is a concerning trend for Vaya and its customers, and should act as a warning for those considering Vaya, unless the number of complaints to the TIO is significantly reduced.
Joseph Hanlon
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