Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Reviews 

Did not want to hear about optus you would think optus was paying them

TIO left us for 5 months with some quite serious teleco Optus complaints, gave alot of leniency to the teleco and left our complaint for months providing no adequate action, resolve or outcome leaving customer to deal with ongoing service, billing and transferring issues. Sub-standard care.

I only did one star as it wouldn’t submit with no stars.
What a complete waste this department is. I have a faulty phone under warranty that the company won’t even look at till I send it to them and have been jerking me around for more than 6 months. When I finally heard from the ombudsman worker he couldn’t even remember I need my phone to run my business. It took 30 emails and 5 months to get to speak to a supposed superior and they are accepting offers from Vodafone without my permission. A complete joke and they have no interest.
This has now been going on for 7 months.
Thought they were there to help and not accept things or try and talk you into other things.
Also why don’t people just get - no phone then no work. No work then no money.

They just want you to do what they want and it’s seriously been the worst experience ever. Convinced Vodafone are only playing till warranty’s runs out.
Staff at ombudsman all live on another plain of fantasy where everything is perfect and obviously never been in the position of no work then no money.
Seriously why have warranties or departments that say they want to help

4 months on still sitting with the TIO, lots of leniency given to teleco, no resolve. No power of authority, relatively limited.

TIO like other regulatory and similar bodies and authorities like ACMA, Fair Trading,Press Council etc very unprofessional and useless like a toothless tiger.

As even those I explained myself several times through emails and to the TIO staff who rang me today it seems they still don't understand what my complaints against Amaysim was about including authorisation link not being sent and the website claiming the voucher didn't go through try again later or contact live chat when the app shows the vouchers did go through (TIO claims I want both to match when I never mentioned matching).

And forget complaints about poor customer service as they don't take poor customer service complaints.

WELL DONE .Optus refuse to give my no back.
TIO solve my issue in two days.
Thanks

Fantastic, and help us fight to get money back from Optus. Excellent job. Thanks Danish officer.

I am being overcharged by Optus when my contact expired. I requested a plan for less data but Optus continues to charge me when though l informed them off this error. The ombudsman will only 'listen' to your enquiry but they do not follow through.

Made original complaint 5/12/22, updated forms and submitted 19/12/22. Continue to answer stock questions and continue to answer Yes "the complaint has not been resolved". Received another today, 3rd one! In two days the complaint will be 90 days outstanding. I have not spoken to anyone from the TIO.
This is a genuine and series complaint about our provider who made a series of errors that has impacted our family business. Since, our provider has made further errors that our business needs to pay for until our complaint is resolved!
I have contacted my local member for assistance and would suggest others do the same. Through numbers we can make change.

Two months into an investigation and not a word from them! No email (except for standard, pre-written receipt of complaint. No phone call. NOTHING! Have given up getting any sort of outcome from them - positive or negative.
Totally useless.
What’s the point of them?
Horrible. Terrible. Waste of time. Confusing. Ineffectual. Pointless.

They actually made my complaint worse, as a direct result of the wrong information given by several of the TIO representatives, my number has been suspended & will soon be deactivated as a direct result of your operators negligence
Their nonchalant attitude and lack of ownership of the wrong information is unconscionable and reprehensible

Had issue of Telstra cancelling my 4g mobile home broadband , which I did not ask for , paid upto next month. TIO indian an , operator was rude , confrontational and when I called him out on his attitude , he began saying whilst laughing " your mental health no good , I cal police on you" I warned him a vexatious call to police claiming I had threatened suicide would result in legal action. He sent them here anyway. What. Total PROTECTION RAQUETT for telcos taking the Wally out of us all. Useless , evil , criminal organisation owned by the very telcos you are complaining about Tax loophole for corporations to avoid the law . Complain directly to the telecommunications minister's office in writing ad calls. Once they are overwhelmed they might decide to rope in telcos . Not till then I'd suggest NSW is worse because liberal government is still running state based protection racquets like the TIO.

Absolutely disgusting shower....the woman dealing with my case made so many wrong comments for which I had proof of...I appealed saying a lot of what it said was totally incorrect. Needless to say my appeal was rejected and the FACTS ignored
Clearly on the side of the company!!
Disgusting!

The TIO gets a commission from Telstra as the TIO makes money from frauds like Telstra. The TIO staff are not trained very unprofessional clueless lie and side with the Telstra SCAMMERS. So getting any complaint over the line with TIO is impossible as they lie cheat and very incompetent. The TIO must be shutdown as they are doing a disservice to the public. The TIO does not set any good standards as they are part of this scam... and getting paid to do zero work. Dirty game to play and con the public. What is is Ombudsmen doing ??? A sleep at the wheels???
INAPT SLOW TO ACT AND SIDEING WITH THE SCAMMERS AT TELSTRA!!
SHAME ON YOU !!

Absolutely useless. Allow Telstra to dictate all terms of the investigation. Totally ignored all compelling evidence given to them. Listened to all the lies from Telstra.
Ignored the fact Telstra sent threatening bullying letters to stop my complaint.

Telstra promised no guaranteed a price then lied about it. The TIO sided with Telstra despite evidence from myself including letters from the office of the CEO stating the cost I I should be paying.

The collusion between the TIO and Telstra is unbelievable

An utterly disgusting experience. Basically to be totally ignored when I had all the evidence. Yet they believe the lies from Telstra (won’t name them but happy to )

All I wanted was what was promised no sorry guaranteed to me.

But the TIO demonstrated it does not care about the individual. It is scared of the telcos so always sided with them.

Disgusting and unacceptable

Infact totally unAustralian

I have found that the TIO have always been helpful to me when I have been let down by TELSTRA.

Not sure why they even exist. The TIO is as useless if not worse then Telstra. Telstra 100% funding tio to ignore complaint. Lodged one with TIO over 9 weeks ago. Still heard nothing

Processing time is too long and slow. If there is a serious problem. They say "Our powers are limited, there is nothing we can do".
What does that mean, GO TO ANOTHER INTERNET PROVIDER! If the same problem continues, GO TO ANOTHER INTERNET PROVIDER .. and so on ..
Australian Telecommunication companies can easily continue to victimize the consumer.
Nobody can say STOP to them.

So submitting a complaint about a telco you'd think they'd be impartial. It was clearly stated by the case manager handling my case that they're really interested in consumers who are new customers with providers or are under contract with their provider; the other type of consumer (old customer, out of contract with their provider) can get stuffed essentially. Being in the latter category that's what happened to me. Really poor!

Back towards the end of 2019, I escalated my complaint with Three to the Ombudsman service. I was extremely pleased with the speed and fairness of the outcome on that occasion.

However, I have since escalated two further complaints to the OS in October and November of 2020, which have not been handled in the same way.

The first one, a decision was due on the 10th of Jan. No decision had been updated, so I messaged them asking what was going on. They came back to me today stating ‘they have a backlog of cases and will start reviewing my case soon’. Two alarming points from this; 1) I had no idea that they were backlogged and there would be a delay - a message (besides the blanket message on the homepage) would’ve been nice. 2) they hadn’t even started investigating yet - despite the portal stating otherwise

The second complaint was closed, stating it was a duplicate, when in reality, the two complaints where about two separate issues and two separate complaints had been logged with Three. However, when I contacted OS, they weren’t having any of it. I completely understand that COVID-19 will be affecting them, but it just seems like they wanted a reason to close the complaint and reduce their total cases.

Fingers crossed my one ‘legitimate’ complaint gets solved soon, but I’m not holding my breath.