Financial hardship assistance

Customers have a right to apply for short-term and long-term financial hardship assistance, and it is free to use. Financial hardship is where you cannot pay your bills to us because of:

• personal or household illness;

• unemployment;

• low or insufficient income, including reduced access to income;

• being a victim survivor of domestic or family violence;

• a death in the family;

• a change in personal or family circumstances;

• a natural disaster;

• unexpected events or unforeseen changes that have impacted your income or expenditure; or

• other reasonable causes

and you consider that you will be able to pay our bills if we agree on an arrangement for financial hardship assistance for our supply of telco products.

Applying for payment assistance

You can apply for payment assistance and monitor the progress of your application by contacting us via:

• Phone 1800 775 423 during 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM & 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM on a business day Melbourne Time.

• Email assistance@splice.au

• Use the live chat assistance during business operating hours on www.splice.au

Options for assistance

After assessing your application, any options for assistance we offer will be tailored to your circumstances and may include:

• temporarily postponing, extending or deferring the time for paying a bill;

• discounting a bill charge;

• applying a credit to your account;

• waiving a debt;

• payment plans tailored to your ability to pay;

• matching your payments or giving credit in return for payments;

• controls on how you can incur charges with us, including spend controls;

• restrictions;

• removing non-essential features of a telecoms product at no cost;

• transferring you to a different telecoms product that better suits your circumstances;

• adjusting internal threshold limits so that you are not disconnected; or

• offering a free non-automatic payment method

Complaints

If you wish to complain about our decision on your application, or have our decision reviewed, you may do so via:

• Phone 1800 775 423

• Email complaintresolution@splice.au

• Use the live chat assistance during business operating hours on www.splice.au

If your complaint remains unresolved, you may contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) on 1800 062 058. Complaining to us or the TIO does not prevent you from agreeing to an arrangement about financial hardship assistance.

Financial counselling

Free financial counselling is available from many community-based services, such as: https://ndh.org.au/financial-counselling/find-a-financial-counsellor/