The way telcos have managed debt levels this calendar year have been of concern, Pinnock said, and are likely to remain an issue of contention well into 2004. "Telcos have become, across the board, much tighter in bringing in debt," he said. "Simply, they're trying to increase their margins as competition bites."
However, Pinnock concedes some consumers may have given the telcos a reason to get tough. "They're faced with the prospect that there are some consumers that take advantage of either local of mobile number portability and depart the scene without paying their bills. [However] it's hard to know how big a deal that is," he said.
"The other half of the equation is the issue of increasing credit and over-commitment with things like dumping. The fastest growing area of billing dispute over the last 12 months has in fact been dumping complaints," Pinnock added.
"Dumping" is the practice of duping dial-up Internet users into running executable code that disconnects them from the Internet and connects them to high-rate premium numbers, which in some cases leads to the victim receiving bills in the range of thousands of dollars.
"If you talk to anyone in a regulatory area... this is one of the biggest issues that has been brought to the fore in policy terms," Pinnock said. Despite the trickery involved in "dumping" scams, the TIO says it may not necessarily be an issue for the police. "First of all you've got to show that there's an intention to defraud, or an intention to deceive, and that's not always easy. The other thing is even if the [dumping] site puts people on notice, there's still the issue of over-commitment, where essentially the carriers are acting as sorts of credit providers, even though they're not."
"That's one of the issues going forward into the new year -- the question of whether the regulatory apparatus relating to the extension of credit might be brought to bear on the telcos," Pinnock added. "They would be very much opposed to that I would think."
The TIO further added it is likely that the number of credit-related complaints dealing with broadband accounts is likely to increase in the next calendar year. "Certainly, if your going to look at the provisioning and extension of credit, and you look at it across the board, then it's not just voice, but data also," he said.
Customers falling victim to massive usage bills due to inadvertent file-sharing or improperly configured software should be better informed of potential risks before being stung, Pinnock said.
"One of the worst areas is file sharing... I think they haven't properly put customers on notice as to what can happen," he added. Because the TIO isn't allowed to investigate tariffs, Pinnock says looking at it from the point of view of whether or not the consumer has been appropriately warned.
Pinnock has been critical of Baycorp Advantage, a debt collection agency for its approach in collecting the debts of telcos. He further says Baycorp's ownership of a credit reporting agency is a conflict of interests.
"If you're going to allow private industry to affectively control the credit listing, or default listing, there should be in effect a rule that says that no participant in the industry, in debt collection, should have an interest in credit reporting," he said.
The biggest event in 2003 in terms of complaint numbers was without a doubt the collapse of Just Internet earlier this year, which collapsed owing the TIO for the complaints it handled. "The TIO, just in that case, went down to the tune of something like AU$90,000... when you compare that with One.Tel going down, we lost AU$270,000. A small ISP cost us a third of what One.Tel did," he said. "That was spectacular."
As for 2004, Pinnock said he's put pay-television providers squarely in his sights. The ACCC recently recommended the TIO be given jurisdiction over non content related pay TV disputes, and the convergence of pay TV with other services through "bundling" means Pinnock is dead serious about reining in what he sees as a regulatory gap.
"If you have an argument about the billing of your pay TV, we currently can't deal with it," he said.
Not surprisingly, the proposed change has ruffled a few feathers.
"The providers are absolutely opposed to it," Pinnock said.
