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
00:19needed to speak to the account holder, which of course was her dead husband. And so she
00:24compares 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,
00:42this seems like it's not a one-off occurrence at all.
00:46Jenny and another family complained about similar conduct and it found in its investigation
00:53that Telstra had a gap in its processes that caused anguish for many bereaved families,
00:59but it won't be taking action. And that's because the industry code that the industry
01:04itself writes and is upheld by the regulator doesn't have any provisions for this. So
01:11they simply can't take any enforcement action. So Telstra will escape any penalty for this.
01:17And that's despite us having spoken to 20 families in this situation. And just today,
01:24more people have been contacting me with similar stories.
01:27The industry says that it's considering the request from the regulator to fix this as
01:33part of a review into the code that's underway at the moment. But it goes into a bigger conversation,
01:39I think, about regulation of the telco sector, with consumer groups really concerned that
01:44there aren't tough, meaningful penalties here or tough, meaningful obligations and
01:50stiff penalties if companies do the wrong thing. And that's a conversation that's going
01:55to play out for some time to come as negotiations over the code happen. And the Minister watches
02:01this closely.
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