A spokeswoman for Telstra, Kerrina Lawrence, told ZDNet Australia customer billing "problems" related to the use of file-sharing applications were still very common.
In the hands of inexperienced Internet users, file-sharing software such as Kazaa can be the difference between a AU$50 and AU$1000 per month Internet usage bill. File-sharing novices with fast Internet connections often find their computers have become a download server for thousands of other Internet users, unaware that they're footing the bill for the data traffic.
A Sydney woman told ZDNet Australia that her monthly Telstra cable bill jumped from AU$54.95 per month to nearly AU$900 after a friend installed Sharman Network's file-sharing software Kazaa on her home PC in a manner she was led to believe would not greatly increase her bill.
A spokeswoman for Telstra said 20 similar customer "problems" were escalated to official complaints over one week in June.
The number is deceptively low, says Lawrence. She said Telstra only logged the cause of customer grievances if their queries were officially escalated to complaint level and the company strived to keep official complaints to a minimum through a culture of appeasement in its customer service arm.
Early this month the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) stepped up pressure on ISPs to warn customers of the dangers of using file sharing software.
The TIO, John Pinnock, said there had been a sharp jump in the number of incidences in which consumers had unwittingly incurred high bills due to use of file-sharing applications.
Telstra provides its customers with several counter-measures to prevent them being financially stung by misuse of file-sharing applications. It attempts to educate users about risky, high-bandwidth usage Internet activity in its marketing material, warns its customers when they're approaching their bandwidth limit and recently improved its usage meter.
However it appears that many customers are still learning the hard way.
"We're finding that when they call, and they've got concerns -- they might have gone over their monthly allowance -- that's where a lot of the interaction and education is taking place," said Lawrence.
For now, it appears that Telstra is showing some mercy when dealing with customers who have been unwittingly incurring excessively high bills.
The woman who contacted ZDNet Australia said Telstra retrospectively allowed her to be charged at rates applied to those on higher usage plans, reducing the bill by around 60 percent.
Lawrence said Telstra was handling complaints connected with the use of peer-to-peer networks on a "case-by-case" basis.
This wouldn't be so much of an issue if Telstra stopped charging on uploads, like 99% of other australian ISPs have done.