Telenet – Belgium's largest provider of cable broadband services – has been struggling with IT problems all year, resulting in the company and the Ombudsman being flooded with complaints.
The switch to a new software platform has for months been causing unprecedented problems. The Telecommunications Ombudsman Service told De Standaard that in just the first four months of this year, 1,785 new complaints have already been made against Telenet. This averages out at 15 per day – almost three times as many as the same period last year.
"I have not experienced this number of complaints since the early years of Telenet. And this is just the tip of the iceberg," said Ombudsman Luc Tuerlinckx. As more and more Telenet customers are transferred to the new system, the number of frustrated subscribers continues to grow.
The complaints are of both an administrative and technical nature, including new decoders or modems taking weeks to activate, relocation requests that are not being processed and e-mail accounts that suddenly stop working. On top of this, some 40 customers entitled to a social tariff were suddenly charged full price.
In some cases, the company denies that the problem is their fault. It does not deliver on promised solutions and sends people from pillar to post, leaving customers waiting for months before getting a refund in some instances.
No light at the end of the tunnel
Due to the avalanche of complaints, customer services was also swamped, leaving affected customers facing long waiting times to receive assistance. The problems are so widespread that the Ombudsman and Federal Government have become involved.
Alexia Bertrand, State Secretary for Consumer Protection, has now called for a meeting with Telenet in which she is expected to demand an action plan to solve the problems "in the short term," but it seems unlikely that this company has such a plan.
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"A few months ago we thought that the situation was gradually starting to sort itself out, that we saw the light at the end of the tunnel," Telenet spokesperson Isabelle Geeraerts told De Standaard. "Today we must admit that we are still in the middle of the tunnel. We are not looking for pathetic excuses. Together with the software suppliers, we are working hard on solutions."
Benedikte Paulissen, Telenet's customer service manager, said on Radio 1 that most of the IT problems have been resolved, so things are on the up, but added that fixing everything "will take weeks and months to complete."
