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Submitting a complaint to your telephony, internet or television operator
23.07.2015
When a user encounters problems with a communications service, his/her complaint should be addressed, at first, to the provider of the respective service. Telephony, internet or television service providers have the obligation to post, on their websites, the complaint handling procedure and to hand it to their subscribers at the moment of concluding a contract or of buying a prepaid card. Moreover, the users of such services have the right to receive, free of charge, at any time throughout the contract duration, a printed copy of this procedure.
Within this procedure, the operators must specify the ways how an end-user can submit a complaint (indicating telephone, fax, e-mail address, postal service used therefor), the working hours for receiving and registering complaints, the maximum term for settling complaints and the starting date from which this term is calculated, irrespective of their transmission means. Moreover, the providers have the obligation to state the damages to which the users are entitled if the complaint settlement deadline is not met.
In case of faults, the complaint handling procedure must specify the maximum repair term, the date on which this terms starts running, as well as the damages applicable for failure to meet the fault repair term.
Where the users find themselves unable to use the contracted services, irrespective of the nature of faults – may they trigger the full or partial service interruption -, in the first instance, they should address the provider they subscribe to. The latter has the obligation to register the complaint and to remedy the fault within the time interval provided in the procedure. Where a provider has exceeded the fault repair term, the users can request damage payments - according to the contract – from the respective electronic communications service provider, for example by reducing the subscription fee in proportion to the time when the service was not operational.
Moreover, the complaint handling procedure must also include information on dispute settlement, when such disputes cannot be amicably solved.
Laying down the electronic communications service providers’ obligation to draw up and hand over a complaint handling procedure, ANCOM aimed at informing the users thoroughly and accurately on the means by which they can complain to their own provider and on the rights they have in this respect.
Should the users not receive the complaint handling procedure, they can address ANCOM – further details are available here. As well, ANCOM can directly intervene in situations where (telephony, internet or television) providers do not observe the users’ information rights, do not offer the number portability service, fail to include certain information in the contract or breach the specific legislation in the electronic communications and postal services fields. Complaints regarding the breach of contract conditions (e.g. failure to comply with the fault repair/complaint settlement term) must be addressed by residential users to ANPC – The Authority for Consumer Protection, the institution entitled to solve such situations.
