Financial hardship involves a situation where a person is unable to meet their financial obligations to us. Financial hardship can occur over a limited timeframe or be long-term. Financial hardship can arise due to illness, unemployment or some other unexpected change to income or expenditure patterns.
There are no charges associated with our financial hardship policy. Each situation will be assessed on a case by case basis. If you wish to claim financial hardship and adjust your payment or service arrangements, please give our Sales and Service Centre a ring on 1300 32 78 37.
Our policy
At vividwireless we recognise that ongoing access to the Internet can be vital to a person experiencing financial hardship. The internet can provide important tools for managing their financial position or accessing other support, such as employment services.
The purpose of this policy is to ensure that if you are experiencing financial hardship, we can work with you to pay your account over time while maintaining ongoing access to the Internet.
Staff who will discuss financial hardship payment arrangements with you are fully trained in this policy. On request, they will assess your eligibility for assistance under the policy. Taking into account your individual circumstances, as part of that assessment, we may request supporting documents from you. If we do request documents we will give you a postal address and email address or facsimile number for you to send them to us.
Establishing financial hardship
Once it has been established that you meet our financial hardship criteria, we will agree upon a suitable arrangement with you. You will have to stick to this payment arrangement. We may require a variation to your plan to reduce your future commitments while the hardship arrangements are in place.
Your obligations
- You'll provide us with enough information for both of us to agree upon a reasonable payment arrangement.
- You will accept the variation of your plan that we negotiate with you.
- If you experience any further financial difficulty, you'll tell us immediately and we will review your situation.
Our responsibilities
- We will confirm that you are the person who is legally liable to pay the debt.
- We won’t take credit management action while financial hardship arrangements are being discussed with you.
- If varying your plan forms part of our agreement with you, we will ensure that access is limited as agreed and that the limits are explained.
- We will monitor your compliance with the financial hardship arrangement and not change the terms of the arrangement if you are meeting those terms.
- We'll ask you to contact us if your situation changes during the term of the hardship arrangement.
- Only our collections department can take action on financial hardship matters.
