The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has encouraged NBN customers with slow connection speeds to contact their retail service provider (RSP) for a refund.
According to the ACCC it has negotiated refund arrangements for NBN customers with a range of suppliers over the past 15 months.
“Telstra, Optus, TPG, iiNet, Internode, Dodo, iPrimus and Commander have each admitted that they likely made false or misleading representations about the connection speeds,” ACCC said.
It said that most of the misleading claims related to fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) connections.
“These RSPs advertised and sold NBN plans with maximum theoretical speeds (e.g. 100 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 40 Mbps upload) when, due to the limitations of FTTN and FTTB technologies, many consumers could never experience these speeds,” the ACCC said.
It said that since November 2017 it had accepted undertakings from each of the eight RSPs that they would contact more than 142,000 affected consumers and offer them a range of options, such as moving to a lower speed plan of their choice, or exiting their contract and receiving a refund.
Acting Chair of ACCC, Mick Keogh said around two-thirds of the affected consumers had not responded to their RSP.
“They may be eligible for refunds, some in the hundreds of dollars,” Mr Keogh said.
“The ACCC is urging NBN customers to contact their NBN retailer if they have received a letter or email offer of a remedy, or think they might be entitled to a remedy.”
He said customers who may have recently signed up to a new NBN plan could also be eligible for a refund where the RSP advertised maximum connection speeds with the plan.
“Within four weeks, RSPs must check their speeds and if the speeds are below that advertised for the plan the consumer chose, the RSP must offer remedy options’’ Mr Keogh said.
