Dan Warne07 November 2007, 5:32 AM
Cut-price ISP Dodo is facing a tsunami of customer rage, topping the complaint list at the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.
Cut-price ISP Dodo is facing a tsunami of customer rage, topping the complaint list at the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.
The numbers, which show how many complaints the independent telecommunications arbiter received during the first quarter of 2007 (January - March) show customers made 6,056 complaints about Dodo -- almost double the 3,341 complaints made about Telstra BigPond.
You can see the complaints figures breakdown for yourself here [PDF].
 Should Dodo go the way of the dodo? |
The figures for Dodo are actually even worse than they look because in percentage terms, its 6,056 complaints are a much larger proportion of its customer-base than BigPond's, which has millions of customers rather than Dodo's "tens of thousands".
Despite having the industry's highest TIO complaint statistics, Dodo claims on its website that it has "the very best service".
Dodo is no stranger to controversy -- it recently started offering "free" internet that only provided enough download allowance for 25 seconds of downloading at full ADSL2+ speed during the day. After the first 25 seconds, customers would incur hefty excess usage fees.
Dodo Managing Director Larry Kestleman said he believed some of the complaints were unjustified but conceded that many of them were legimate issues "that we are dealing with".
"With our aggressive pricing, a higher percentage of novice users took up our offers which caused a much higher call volume than anticipated.
"We have increased numbers of staff and provided additional training at the call centres to resolve the issues causing the complaints.
"Our average wait times at the call center for the last month was around 1 min. I am not sure how many other call centers in our industry can make that claim," Kestleman added.
He also supplied APC with a graph (below) showing that Dodo's complaint volumes have been steadily dropping, though it's not clear what the axes of the graph actually represent. Kestleman added helpfully that he encouraged APC to disregard the "outdated data from the ombudsman report."
 Dodo's version of events: the graph Dodo supplied about its current complaint volumes |
Dodo may be the worst offender by far, but the internet industry as a whole isn't doing well with customer satisfaction, according to the TIO.
Complaints about ISPs rose by 16.9 per cent in the 2007 financial year -- a third of all complaints made to the TIO.
"Customer service was a particular issue for internet service consumers," said the TIO Ombudsman, Deirdre O’Donnell.
The leading gripe by consumers was ISPs failing to act on a customer’s request, giving incorrect or inadequate advice or not being able to be contacted.
A quick scan of the Dodo forum at Whirlpool shows that many users have serious concerns over many of these points in relation to Dodo.