Customer complaint issues

Customers identified 7,423 different issues associated with the 3,803 complaints opened this quarter. This was a decrease of 6.5% on the previous quarter when 7,941 issues were identified. A decline in disputed high bill complaints accounts for most of this decrease. Between January and March 2021 disputed high bills were the identified issue in 1,204 complaints (16.2% of total issues), a 24.8% drop on the previous quarter (1,600 complaints, 20.1% of total issues). 

Customers may be aware of their increased consumption due to working from home and may be more accepting of the resulting higher bills. Also, the Federal Government JobKeeper and JobSeeker supplements combined with the AER’s Statement of Expectations (SoE) means that customers with affordability issues that would normally present with disputes about high bills have receded. This is likely to change over the next six months as stimulus support and the SoE wind back. 

While complaints about poor customer service decreased from 733 to 698, this issue increased slightly as a percentage of the total issues (9.4% from 9.2%). Credit issues remained low, consistent with the last 12 months. Debt collection issues made the top 10 this quarter despite the limitations on this activity by the SoE, with 140 complaints up from 103 in the previous quarter. 

The other billing issues identified in the table below varied, with some increasing over the last quarter and others decreasing. 

Table 2 – Top 10 issues January to March 2021, including previous four quarters 

Core issue in a complaint 

In October 2020, EWON began a new data collection process which identifies the core issue in a customer’s complaint, ie the issue that underpins each complaint. For example a customer may be complaining about a high bill and associated with that high bill, is also a complaint that the meter was not read despite access being available and failure of the retailer to respond to the complainant – three issues in total with the high bill being the driver of the customer’s complaint.  In each complaint EWON receives there may be more than one issue but there can be only one core issue.  

Core issues are allocated on finalisation / resolution of the complaint – this ensures that we identify the correct core issue based on information provided by both the customer and the provider. 

There were three billing issues where the number of core issues increased this quarter despite the overall decline in complaint numbers: 

1. Opening or closing accounts – increased by 19.1% (243 up from 204) 
2. Complaints about billing errors – increased by 76.2% (104 up from 59) 
3. Billing associated with wrong meters – increased by 24.6% (86 up from 69). 

Poor customer service is rarely the main reason a customer approaches EWON. Even though four different customer service issues presented in the overall top ten issues this quarter, there customer service was not in the top ten core issues.  It should be recognised that dissatisfaction with provider customer service underpins the reason why most complaints are raised with EWON i.e. if the customer was satisfied with the service provided during their contact with their provider, there would be no reason to contact EWON. 

Table 3 - Top 10 core issues