Service Provider Codes of Practice and Complaints Procedures

Service providers must have a code of practice for handling complaints.  Service Providers must implement the following measures, at a minimum, to assist consumers (including businesses) when they need to contact them with a complaint.

Making a complaint

1. To make it easier for consumers to make a complaint, the Service Provider is required to provide:

– A Freephone number or a landline or mobile number or a number that is free to all consumers
– An electronic means of contact – i.e. an email address or an online complaint form where the consumer can attach documents to send to the service provider if they need to as part of their complaint. The electronic means of contact should have no word character restrictions and the consumer must be provided with a record of the complaint in a durable form.
– An address to write to the service provider.

2. Consumers cannot be transferred to any other section of the service providers business if the call costs more than the cost of a call to a landline number or a mobile number

Process for resolving complaints

3. A complaint must be acknowledged within two working days and the acknowledgement must include details of the link to the Service Provider’s code of practice and a unique reference number that allows the complaint to be logged and tracked.

4. A complaint must be responded to /resolved within ten working days. When a resolution cannot be provided within 10 working days, the consumer must be given a timeframe for resolution, the details of the service provider’s internal escalation process and contact details for the escalation team (e mail address) and ComReg’s details.

5. A complaint must be recorded and tracked.

Refunds

Service Providers must also specify in their code of practice the mechanism where-by consumers (including business’s) can avail of a refund if appropriate to the complaint.

Publication of Code of Practice

A link to the code of practice for complaint handling must be published on the home page of the Service Provider’s website and the code must be able to be located by consumers using certain search words on the service provider’s website – for example ‘complaint’ or ‘how to make a complaint’.

For more information see Electronic Communications Complaints Handling Code of Practice