Watchdog takes overcharging case to court
Eleven charges have been laid against Spark by the country’s competition watchdog for overcharging current and former customers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Spark managing director Simon Moutter said it was disappointed by the prosecution under the Fair Trading Act, given the charges stemmed from three ‘‘genuine mistakes’’ which Spark had tried to put right.
Spark said it had provided credits to all the customers who had remained with the company.
But thousands of customers who left Spark remained out of pocket, despite its efforts to track them down and pay them back.
Spark said it had hoped to avoid court proceedings by acknowledging the mistakes and offering money to charity.
One of the errors stemmed from an equipment fault in 2015 that resulted in a ‘‘small percentage of broadband customers’’ being over-billed for data, Spark said.
Another involved the incorrect application of a ‘‘welcome credit’’ offered to ultrafast broadband customers in 2016.
The third reason for overcharging was a ‘‘billing implementation issue’’ that related to a 30-day notice period when customers left Spark.
Spark announced in May that it was attempting to refund more than $1 million to 135,000 former broadband and mobile customers, though not all of the refunds stemmed from the three errors.
The ‘‘errors’’ for which the commission was prosecuting Spark were genuine mistakes that did not involve any malicious intent, Moutter said.
‘‘Given the unintentional nature of the errors involved and the extensive actions already taken by us to put things right for our customers, we are obviously disappointed the Commerce Commission is now embarking on what will be a costly, timeconsuming court process for both parties.
‘‘That being said, we are deeply disappointed that issues have affected customers.’’
Spark said ‘‘to give some context to the impact on customers’’, that the 2015 equipment fault resulted in 5325 customers being overcharged a total of $216,937, and the 2016 welcome credit impacted 463 customers to the tune of $46,300.
The company had not so far been able to track down 8829 former customers who were owed $304,070 as a result of the 30-day billing issue, though most former customers who were owed money had been paid back. these our