Financial Hardship Policy

Anyone with a WARP Internet service, or who is responsible for paying for one, can ask for help. Financial hardship means you want to pay but can’t right now, or can only pay by going without something else. It can happen for any reason — losing work or hours, illness or injury, caring for someone, a relationship ending, domestic or family violence, a death in the family, a natural disaster, rising costs, or anything else. It can be short-term or ongoing.

You don’t have to be behind on a bill. It’s often easier to help before a payment is missed than after. Asking will never be held against you, and it won’t affect your service or how we treat you.

Contact us and tell us you’re having trouble paying. You can say “financial hardship”, but any words will do:

• Email: hello@warp.net.au
• Phone: 02 4398 7081, every day, during waking hours (Sydney time)
• Online: the support page in your portal, or our contact page

A financial counsellor, community worker, family member or anyone else you choose can contact us for you. Just let us know it’s okay, or have them tell us you’ve agreed. We’ll deal with them as your representative for as long as you want.

There’s no application form, no assessment fee, and no charge for any of the help in this policy. If you need an interpreter, call TIS National on 131 450 and ask them to call us. If you use the National Relay Service, you can reach us through it, or by email.

• We’ll respond within 2 working days of you getting in touch, usually sooner, to talk through your situation and the options.
• We’ll ask what you can realistically afford, and what help would make a difference. You won’t be pushed into an arrangement you can’t keep.
• From the moment you ask, we pause any payment reminders and suspension steps on your account while we work it out with you.
• Once we agree on something, it starts straight away, and we confirm it in writing (section 6).

These options can be combined, and we’ll tailor them to you. If there’s something else that would help, ask.

• More time to pay. We can move the date an invoice is charged to your card, or hold it for an agreed period. There are no late fees or interest — we don’t charge them, ever.
• Paying without automatic card charges. If you’d rather not have invoices charged to your card automatically, we can pause automatic collection and you can pay by bank transfer (EFT) instead. We’ll give you our account details and keep your invoices open until your payment arrives. It’s free, and it works with any payment plan we agree.
• A payment plan. We can split an amount you owe into smaller instalments, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, at an amount you can afford, charged on dates that suit you (for example, the day after payday).
• A cheaper plan for a while. We can move you to a lower-priced plan for as long as you need, at no cost. There’s no fee to move back up when you’re ready. The usual difference for the rest of the paid month goes on your next invoice, and if you’re in a hardship arrangement we’ll waive it on request. Our plans, from lowest price, are:
  • Essential (nbn 25, 25/10 Mbps) — $55/month inc GST
  • Boost (Home Fast, 500/50 Mbps, or 100/20 Mbps on FTTN, FTTB and FTTC) — $89/month inc GST
  • Ultra (Home Ultrafast, 1000/100 Mbps, FTTP and HFC only) — $119/month inc GST

  Plan changes take effect when nbn completes them, usually within a day or two. If you move down, we work out the difference for the rest of the month you’ve already paid for and credit it on your next invoice, and that invoice is at the lower price, so the saving shows straight away. If you’re already on Essential, our lowest-priced plan, the other options here will help more.

• Pausing your service. We can pause your service, and your charges, for an agreed period. You keep your account, your public IP if you have one (free or paid), and your IPv6 range, and there’s no new first-month payment or other charge when we turn it back on.
• Waiving or discounting what you owe. Where it’s fair given your circumstances, we can reduce an amount owing, give you a credit, or waive part or all of a debt. Once we’ve waived something, we won’t ask for it again.
• Deferring charges. If a one-off charge is coming up — for example an nbn charge we’d pass on to you — we can defer it or spread it out.
• Stopping without penalty. If what you need is to stop the service, you can cancel at any time with no exit fee. We refund the unused days of the month you’ve paid for, pro-rata, to the card you paid with, and we never charge for days after you cancel.

We can also help you look at whether your plan still suits how you use the internet, and tell you about any other lower-cost options we know of.

You don’t need to prove anything to ask for help, and we won’t delay help while we ask questions. For short-term help — more time, a short payment plan or a temporary plan change — we don’t ask for any evidence at all.

For a long-term arrangement or a large waiver, we may ask for something simple, such as a letter from a financial counsellor or a Centrelink statement. We’ll only ask for the minimum we need, give you a reasonable time to provide it, and keep helping you in the meantime. We will never ask for evidence where domestic, family or sexual violence is involved.

Within 2 working days of agreeing on an arrangement, we’ll email you (or send it another way you prefer) a plain summary of:

• what we’ve agreed, including any amounts and dates;
• how long it lasts, and what happens when it ends;
• what to do if your circumstances change; and
• how to contact us, and how to complain if you need to.

We’ll get in touch before an arrangement ends to check how you’re going and whether you need more time.

Tell us any time you need to change an arrangement — if your income drops further, or you can pay more, or you just need a different plan. We’ll review it within 2 working days. If you miss a payment under an arrangement, we won’t cancel it or act on your account; we’ll contact you first and work out a new plan with you.

From the time you ask for help, while we’re working out an arrangement, and for as long as it’s in place, we will not:

• suspend, restrict or disconnect your service for non-payment;
• take any other credit management action on what you owe;
• charge late fees, interest or any fee for the assistance;
• sell or assign your debt to anyone; or
• use a debt collector or list a default with a credit reporting body.

We never sell debts, use debt collectors, list defaults or run credit checks with credit reporting bodies — for any customer, at any time.

We only ever suspend a service for non-payment when an amount has been unpaid for 30 days after a reminder, you haven’t been in touch, and you aren’t in an arrangement, waiting on a hardship request, or disputing the amount in a complaint. Even then:

• we try to reach you first by email and by phone or SMS, and every reminder and notice links to this policy;
• we give you at least 5 working days’ written notice before any suspension, saying how much is owed, when the suspension would happen, and how to get help; and
• we don’t cancel a suspended service for at least a further 30 days, and contacting us at any point during that time stops the process while we talk.

We never suspend or cancel a service for non-payment where we know domestic, family or sexual violence is a factor. See our Customer Terms for the full billing and payment terms.

What you tell us about your situation stays confidential. We record only what we need to help you, restrict who can see it, and use it only to provide assistance. It’s handled under our Privacy Policy, and we don’t share it with anyone else without your consent, unless the law requires it.

If you’re affected by domestic, family or sexual violence, including financial abuse, you get priority help. We may waive amounts owing, and we’ll never ask you to deal with the person using violence. See Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Support for everything we can do.

• National Debt Helpline — free, confidential financial counselling: 1800 007 007 or ndh.org.au. A financial counsellor can talk to us on your behalf, and we’ll give any arrangement they propose the same consideration as one you propose yourself.
• Moneysmart — free government tools for budgeting and managing bills and debt: moneysmart.gov.au

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your request, tell us. Complaints from people who have asked for, or are receiving, hardship help are treated as urgent under our Complaints Handling Policy and resolved within 2 working days. If we still can’t agree, you can contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman for free on 1800 062 058 or at tio.com.au.

This policy is published here so anyone can read it before they need it. We’ll send you a copy free — by email, by post, in large print, or in another format you need — or talk you through it over the phone, with an interpreter if you’d like one. Just ask. We review it regularly, and everyone who helps customers is trained to use it.