Vocus, whose brands include iPrimus, Dodo and Commander, will compensate a number of its fibre to the node (FTTN) and fibre to the basement (FTTB) customers who were sold NBN services with maximum speeds that their lines were not capable of achieving.
Vocus announced today that it had reached an agreement with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The company began a review of its NBN services last year after Telstra and Optus announced they would compensate thousands of customers who purchased FTTN and FTTB services.
TPG and its subsidiaries iiNet and Internode are also compensating customers.
According to the ACCC, 3384 Dodo customers, 1912 iPrimus customers, and 565 Commander customers were not able to achieve the speeds they paid for.
Altogether, some 75,000 customers of Australia’s major ISPs have been affected by the issue.
“A small percentage of our NBN customers have not been capable of achieving the speed of their chosen NBN plan due to issues with the underlying infrastructure,” Vocus Group’s consumer chief, Sandra de Castro, said in a statement.
“While it was only approximately 6 per cent of our NBN services in operation, we still view this as too many and we have worked cooperatively with the ACCC to agree on an outcome, including the offer of compensation to these customers.
“We can only accurately confirm achievable speeds after the connection is completed and we commit to doing so not only to ensure that affected customers receive the necessary information to make an informed decision, but also to ensure a greater level of customer satisfaction.”
“Dodo, iPrimus and Commander have admitted that by offering speed plans that could not be delivered, they likely breached consumer law by engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct and making false or misleading representations,” ACCC Commissioner Sarah Court said.
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