Widow harassed over late husband’s phone account

ABC NEWS (Australia)

There are calls to fix gaps in consumer protections for phone and internet customers, to prevent grieving families being unnecessarily harassed by their provider after a loved one dies. It follows an investigation by the industry regulator, which found Telstra has caused considerable anguish for bereaved families, including one widow who had been repeatedly contacted for a decade.

Transcript

00:00Jenny has a truly shocking story. So, after her husband died in 2014, she told Telstra

00:09and she did this via calls and emails. She even went into a Telstra store, she says,

00:15but nothing seemed to work. And some of the Telstra staff, she says, told her that they

00:20needed to speak to the account holder, which of course was her dead husband. And so she

00:25compares the situation she was in to being stuck in a Monty Python skit, some kind of

00:31dark comedy, where she couldn't get out of it. And it was only after she did a story

00:37with us and complained directly to the CEO that something happened. And unfortunately,

00:43this seems like it's not a one-off occurrence at all.

00:47Jenny and another family complained about similar conduct and it found in its investigation

00:54that Telstra had a gap in its processes that caused anguish for many bereaved families.

01:00But it won't be taking action. And that's because the industry code that the industry

01:05itself writes and is upheld by the regulator doesn't have any provisions for this. So they

01:12simply can't take any enforcement action. So Telstra will escape any penalty for this.

01:18And that's despite us having spoken to 20 families in this situation. And just today,

01:25more people have been contacting me with similar stories.

01:28Jenny believes the system's failed her and many others, and she's worried that other

01:32families could be at risk now as well. The industry says that it's considering the request

01:39from the regulator to fix this as part of a review into the code that's underway at

01:44the moment. But it goes into a bigger conversation, I think, about regulation of the telco sector

01:50with consumer groups really concerned that there aren't tough, meaningful penalties here

01:55or tough, meaningful obligations and stiff penalties if companies do the wrong thing.

02:01And that's a conversation that's going to play out for some time to come as negotiations

02:07over the code happen. And the minister watches this closely.

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