Spark admits two charges laid by Commerce Commission

SPARK, the country’s largest telco provider, has pleaded guilty to two Commerce Commission charges over operational and billing issues with customers.

Penalties are yet to be determined by the courts, but fines could range up to $600,000 per charge.

The two charges were over the incorrect implementation of a ‘‘welcome credit’’ for fibre broadband customers joining Spark during 2016 and billing implementation over the 30day notice period, when customers left Spark.

A third Commerce Commission charge, over a 2015 equipment fault which affected data billing, for a small percentage of customers, was withdrawn by the Commerce Commission.

The charges were laid under the Fair Trading Act 1986.

Spark said in an NZX market update yesterday the issues were all systembased errors caused by genuine mistakes, with no malicious intent on its part.

‘‘In respect of all these issues, Spark has already applied credits to the accounts of all impacted customers and has made extensive efforts to return all amounts owed to former customers,’’ the update said.

The telco said it had repaid a total of $216,937 to all 5325 customers affected by the hardware failure issue and a total $46,300 to the 463 affected by the ‘‘welcome letter issue’’, The New Zealand Herald reported.

Spark said the actions were not expected to have a significant financial effect, nor affect profitability, and there was no change to Spark’s existing fullyear 2019 financial guidance.