An error in a billing system resulted in 150 telco customers receiving the bills of 150 other customers, according to a warning issued today by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
The invoices were included in a PDF attachment sent to customers of Telco Service Holdings in late 2012, according to an ACMA statement.
In one case, a customer claimed to have received approximately 462 invoices in a PDF containing 2,952 pages, according to a Final Investigation Report by the ACMA.
The mistake was due to a billing software "glitch" in September 2012, according to correspondence from Telco Service Holdings cited in the ACMA report. The glitch related to the "transformation of data to email invoices".
The error occurred on 9 September and was resolved by 11 September, according to the ACMA report.
The telco has received a formal warning from the ACMA, which reports the incident breached privacy rules in the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code (TCP Code).
The mistake was "quickly rectified" and hasn’t occurred again, according to the ACMA.
While the telco had a privacy policy, the ACMA reports it "is not clear to the ACMA how Telco Service Holdings ensures it complies with this policy".
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