Disputing a telecom bill: you have one year

A telecom bill is disputed in writing, with your operator first, and as fast as possible. After one year, the Telecom Ombudsman Service turns the file down without even looking at it. Between those two markers runs a precise legal calendar, and it is far shorter than the period during which the invoice itself can still be claimed.

Paying means accepting

Settling an invoice you believe is wrong amounts to acknowledging it. That reflex is a bad one.

The right move is two simultaneous gestures: pay the amount you are not disputing, and state in writing that the rest is disputed. A subscription at €20, an invoice at €40: you transfer €20 and you dispute the other €20 in black and white. As long as the undisputed part is paid, the operator can neither cut nor restrict your service.

What is the deadline to dispute a telecom bill?

No Belgian statute sets a number of days. The law simply requires a reasonable period, and Belgian legal practice takes the month following receipt of the invoice as the reference. Waiting longer opens the door to an unpleasant argument: prolonged silence is pleaded as tacit acceptance.

Content matters as much as timing. A useful dispute names the exact line, the amount and the reason: the rate applied, the quantity billed, the billing period, hardware returned, a service never activated, an invoice from a former operator received after a switch. Registered post is not compulsory. It is simply the only way to prove the date of dispatch, and that date will later decide whether your file is admissible.

At Proximus, which runs its own copper, fibre and mobile networks, the complaint form in the customer area generates a file number. At Telenet, which owns its cable network in Flanders and Brussels, and at Orange, which runs its own mobile network plus the Walloon cable network taken over from VOO, a written form has the same effect. That number is not decorative: it will be the first document to attach if the dispute moves up a level.

The full calendar of a Belgian telecom dispute

The rules of procedure of the Telecom Ombudsman Service, in their version of 26 May 2025, set out every step. No mainstream Belgian source publishes them together, yet lining them up is all it takes to see where a file gets lost.

One line stands out. The only step with no figure attached is the one that concerns you most: the operator's reply. The text asks it to answer "as soon as possible" and to do everything possible to find a satisfactory solution, which commits it to nothing measurable. In exchange, the same article requires the operator, when no solution arrives within a reasonable time, to hand you the Telecom Ombudsman's contact details on its own initiative, on paper or another durable medium. That obligation has existed for years and almost nobody sees it happen.

Five years to claim from you, one year to complain

Here is the asymmetry that costs the most, and it is never written in one place.

A telephone, television or internet invoice becomes time-barred after five years in Belgium. For five years, then, the operator can demand payment. Your free remedy closes much earlier: article 9 of the rules of procedure rejects any complaint lodged with the operator more than a year ago. A ratio of one to five, against the customer.

The trap springs on dormant files. A dispute sent in January, an evasive reply in March, a follow-up in June, then nothing: by January of the following year the file is no longer admissible before the Ombudsman, even though the debt is still running and will resurface at the first formal notice. Nothing obliges the operator to tell you the clock is ticking.

Seven grounds get a file rejected before any review

Article 9 lists the cases in which the Ombudsman Service simply refuses to handle a request. Knowing them saves months lost to a formality.

• The complaint was not lodged with the operator first. This is the most frequent ground for rejection, and the only one that is entirely avoidable.
• The complaint was lodged with the operator more than one year ago.
• The request is frivolous, vexatious or defamatory.
• The complaint is anonymous, or the other party is neither identified nor identifiable.
• The dispute is or has already been the subject of court proceedings. Going to court closes the mediation door.
• The request falls outside the service's remit.
• Handling it would seriously hamper the effective functioning of the service.

One formal requirement sits on top: only written complaints are admissible. The helpline, 02 223 06 06, exists to point you in the right direction, not to register a file.

What happens to a billing complaint in Belgium?

The Ombudsman Service's 2025 annual report, published on 25 March 2026, finally gives orders of magnitude. The service recorded 15,087 written requests for intervention over the year and handled 15,009 complaints, including those lodged in late 2024. It also answered more than 4,000 information requests by telephone.

Billing therefore comes first, well ahead of everything else. And the fate of those files can be calculated by combining two rates the report publishes separately: 86.31 % of complaints were declared admissible, and 96.72 % of the admissible ones ended in an amicable settlement.

Five billing files in six end in an agreement. Few administrative remedies post a rate like that, and it alone justifies not giving up after the standard customer-service reply. The other side of the calculation deserves stating too: roughly 590 billing files were never examined in 2025, not because they were groundless, but because they ran into one of the seven grounds listed above.

The operator's silence counts as a commitment

Article 14 is the most useful provision in the rules, and the least known.

When no amicable settlement is reached, the Ombudsman issues a recommendation to the operator, with a copy to the complainant. The operator then has 20 working days to justify its decision if it does not intend to follow it. Once that deadline passes, the service sends a reminder and a fresh 20-working-day period begins. If the operator lets that second deadline run out without a reasoned reply, it commits, by that silence alone, to applying the recommendation as regards the complainant's personal compensation.

In other words, inertia stops working against you at that stage: it works against the operator. That is the exact reverse of the balance of power in the early months, where the absence of any figure for replying to a dispute leaves the operator in charge of the clock.

One caveat remains. The mediation procedure does not prevent you from going to court afterwards, and the rules say so expressly. The reverse is not true: a dispute already brought before a judge is no longer admissible before the Ombudsman.

Do I have to pay during mediation?

No, and that is the main practical benefit of referring the case. As soon as the operator is informed that the Ombudsman has received a complete file, it must suspend any debt collection procedure. Ordinary limitation periods are suspended in the same movement when the complainant is a consumer.

That protection has a limit, and it is quantified: four months maximum, or until the recommendation, or until the amicable settlement, whichever comes first. Yet handling can legally last 90 days, extendable once by another 90 days where the case is complex, so 180 days.

The numbers do not line up. Four months is about 122 calendar days: in the scenario where the Ombudsman activates the extension, close to two months remain in which the file is still open while the suspension of debt collection has expired. Add the 40 working days of article 14 if a recommendation is needed, and the dispute can run for seven and a half months against four months of protection.

In practice that scenario stays rare: the average handling time for a mediation complaint was 34 calendar days in 2023, nearly three times less than the legal ceiling. But if your file passes the four-month mark, watch the collection letters rather than assuming they are frozen.

If the gap comes from overage rather than an error, our article on out-of-bundle charges and rising bills sets out the five lines that produce the same effect. If the invoice is correct but too expensive, our method to cut your telecom bill covers renegotiation. And if the dispute was born of a change of operator, the automatic compensations are in our guide to Easy Switch and service downtime, Easy Switch being the Belgian one-stop procedure for moving a fixed-line contract. To compare what offers are worth before leaving, our bundle ranking remains the starting point.

Sources: Telecom Ombudsman Service, rules of procedure and how to lodge a complaint; 2025 annual report of the Ombudsman Service, published on 25 March 2026; BIPT, consumer complaints; Droits Quotidiens, disputing a telephone bill, updated 12 March 2026.