What are the Telecom Advisors? Mattias Grafström answers!

Mattias Grafström is CEO of Telekområdgivarna, which provides impartial and free help to consumers on TV, telephony and broadband subscriptions. Here he explains the role of the Telecoms Advisors and how operators work to respond to consumer feedback.

Telekområdgivarna is a non-profit organization funded by participating operators, and owned by IT&Telekomföretagen. To ensure impartiality in our work, we have both the Swedish Consumer Agency and the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority as representatives on the board.

As a consumer, you can turn to us both before signing a contract for preventive advice, and if there are problems with your subscription or you cannot reach an agreement with your operator. You could say that we are working to make consumers better consumers and operators better operators. Through active cooperation with authorities and operators, we contribute to the goal of creating Sweden's best consumer market.

Why should operators be members of the Telecoms Advisors?
It is a way for serious operators to show that they take responsibility for ensuring that consumers can get help from an impartial body in the event of a dispute. In addition, they are also involved in the development of self-regulation within the industry, which they are nevertheless bound by in the form of industry practices, such as our rules of conduct and the work we did for the mobile operators' agreement with the Swedish Consumer Agency on marketing coverage. You get a chance to resolve disputes through our mediation-like procedure instead of the consumer having to turn to the General Complaints Board etc. A question that is more difficult to answer is why a serious operator would not choose to be part of the Telecom Advisors.

The telecom market is often described as problematic, and gets low marks in the Consumer Report. What do you think is the main reason for this?
The main problem in the telecom market is that it is very easy to become an operator and sell telecom services, while it is very difficult to be kicked out of the market if you are rogue. The regulation that is meant to create competition paves the way for rogue operators and means that new serious players can find it very difficult to enter the market.

Another problem I see is that there are still many companies that work to lock in their customers with lock-in periods instead of trusting that they can build up customer satisfaction so that lock-in periods are not needed for customers to stay. It is one thing that there are installment forms for e.g. TV boxes and mobile phones, but when you become tied to pure subscription services, it feels like a form of resignation on the part of the operators in the confidence that they will be able to build up customer loyalty. When the binding period expires, difficulties arise in retaining customers who feel locked in, according to information from the Swedish Quality Index.

What else do you think needs to be done to further improve customer satisfaction?
The telecom industry in general has the most problems with the sales situation and complaint handling. On the one hand, products are difficult to sell and consumers are often at an information disadvantage, i.e. they may not always have the knowledge needed to make an informed choice. This is sometimes exploited by rogue traders and leads to consumer dissatisfaction and, at worst, loss of confidence in the industry as a whole.

In terms of complaint handling, the most common problem is that some operators make it difficult to get through to customer services. Dissatisfaction is expressed by those who have to wait for a long time in a telephone queue and/or are transferred around customer services, and by those who are not allowed to speak to a person in charge, despite requests to do so. There are also cases where customer services do not know the applicable rules and give incorrect answers about, for example, the right of withdrawal, or do not take responsibility for sales made through retailers.

To address this, it must become more difficult for rogue traders to enter and remain in the market, and more regulatory oversight of rogue traders would be desirable.

Although authorities have become better at acting more quickly and coming up with more constructive solutions to problems, it sometimes feels like they are asking for more legislation without first actively working to ensure compliance with existing legislation. The rogue traders who do not comply with existing legislation are also unlikely to comply with the new legislation requested by the authorities.

How do Telecom Advisors cooperate with IT&Telekomföretagen?
Besides the fact that IT&Telekomföretagen has a very good representative on our board (Kajsa Frisell), we work towards the same goal of increasing customer satisfaction in the telecom industry, which in turn leads to an improved reputation for the industry!