Communication companies face fines of Millions for extended response times

Have you dried up waiting for the service center of the Internet, mobile or TV provider?

The Ministry of Communications fines a series of companies that did not meet the required standards of timely response and made customers wait. The Communications Ministry intends to impose financial sanctions totaling approximately NIS 3 million on six communications companies that violated the instructions regarding response times to consumers. According to the amendment to the Telephone Answering Law that entered into force in July 2019, companies must provide a human answer within six minutes at most, or alternatively the option of selecting the customer for a call back within three hours. The director of supervision at the Ministry of Communications conducted a comprehensive inspection and found unusual findings in the companies Expon 018, Bezeq International, Wicom, Yes, Pelephone and Rami Levy, therefore the Ministry informed them of its intention to impose financial sanctions on them.

The companies will be given a limited period of time to present their claims on the issue, before the final sanction amount is determined. In addition, warning letters were sent to additional companies where anomalies were discovered on a smaller scale. Along with this, in the inspection of the Triple C company, no abnormality was found in the waiting times for the call centers in all the periods inspected by the office.

The Director General of the Ministry of Communications, Attorney Einval Mashash, said that "the Ministry attaches the utmost importance to providing an adequate response to consumers at the call centers, with the aim of ensuring an adequate level of service. Therefore, the regulations set standards for human response times at three call centers: a fault repair center, a Ending calls and checking accounts. I expect the companies to work to improve the service provided to consumers and shorten the waiting times."