Summary

Facts

This complaint is about whether the telecommunications provider (to be referred to in this
Determination as the CSP, acronym for Carriage Service Provider) is liable to the
complainant for any customer service guarantee (“CSG”) payments under the
Telecommunications Customer Service Guarantee Standard 2000 (No.2) (“the CSG
Standard”), as a result of the way it responded to the complainant’s notifications to it of faults
with his landline service.

Decision

The TIO issued a determination that CSP to compensate the
complainant in accordance with its obligations under the CSG Standard.

Reasoning

The TIO stated that, It is in relation to the faults reported on 25 August 2006 and 7 September 2006 that the TIO
has found that the CSP did not act reasonably in addressing the fault. Relevant to this finding,
was the TIO’s consideration of the call records for the dates around this time. Those records
show evidence of periods where the service has been significantly disrupted. The TIO
particularly notes that there are no calls whatsoever made from the service between 24 August
2005 to 29 August 2005 or 5 September 2005 to 13 September 2005 and that only a few short
calls are made between 29 August 2005 and 5 September 2005. The TIO considers that the
number of calls in this period is dramatically fewer than what was recorded, for example, in
the months of both January and February 2006.
As a result of this evidence the TIO considers that these faults are consistent with the
definition of a “fault or service difficulty” in s4 of the CSG Standard under the grounds of
“repetition of service cut off” and “disruption to communication because of excessive noise
levels.”
As a result the TIO considers that the CSP should pay CSG between the fault reported on 25
August 2005 and the closing of the fault report on 16 September 2005. The TIO finds that the
CSP should pay the amount of $420.00 of CSG entitlements to the complainant. This is based
on fourteen working days after mandatory completion date of 26 August 2005, from 29
August until 15 September 2005, at $12 per day for the first 5 working days, and $40 per dayfor the 9 working days thereafter.