The most complained about business was LJ Hooker followed by Harvey Norman.
There were 25 complaints about AirAsia, 29 against Harvey Norman and 31 against LJ Hooker.
The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) quoted a spokesman for AirAsia as saying the airline was fully committed to high-quality customer service and compliance with Australian laws.
“We are also implementing additional measures to improve productivity and to add convenience and comfort to our guests’ travel experience,” he said.
The SMH reported that the rankings were the first to be released in the newly launched Complaints Register, from NSW Fair Trading.
The register, which will be published online monthly, identifies all NSW businesses that have been the subject of 10 or more complaints in a month.
July’s register includes 20 businesses, with a mix of real estate agents, home building businesses, online deal sites and retail stores.
Among the more recognisable names on the list were Apple, Foxtel, NRMA and Flight Centre, the SMH report said.
According to NSW Fair Trading Commissioner Rod Stowe the purpose of the register was to “empower consumers” while providing an incentive to businesses to remain accountable for their services.
“The register encourages the marketplace to regulate itself, and publishing monthly allows businesses the chance to improve their complaint handling procedures,” he was quoted as saying.
While the business community had been responsive to the idea of the register, not everyone, especially those on the offenders list, agreed with how it had been structured.
“I think it’s unfair on consumers and offers them no direct benefit,” Chris Mourd, head of real estate at LJ Hooker was quoted as saying.
Mourd argued that naming the brand LJ Hooker as the worst offender was unbalanced, because the 31 complaints all related to individual franchises, and not the business as a whole.
“We have 230 offices in NSW. That’s less than 1.5 per cent of offices complained about,” he said, adding that the company implemented its own “best in class” complaints system in 2014, that is compliant with every state in Australia.
On Wednesday the Real Estate Institute of NSW criticised the register, saying that it would unfairly tarnish reputable businesses, according to the SMH report.
“The register will simply be full of franchises and groups who, due to the popularity of their brand and their sheer size, will almost always have 10 consumer complaints per month,” its president John Cunningham was quoted as saying.
“NSW Fair Trading has been negligent and reckless to apply a product-based system to the service industries of NSW, thereby unfairly discrediting good businesses and, as such, is acting as one of the worst discriminators in NSW,” he added.
Unfazed, Stowe said Fair Trading could already see positive effects from the register.
“If we had run this in March, we estimate we would have had 30-odd businesses on the list. But the good news is we spoke to all those businesses and shared our complaints and lots have improved dramatically,” he said.
“In my book it’s already been a success. Several [businesses] have committed to never appearing on the register and have made wholesale changes to their business practices and dispute resolution protocols,” the SMH quoted him as saying.
