‘Horrified’: Psychologist’s $14k fight with Optus

The psychologist claims she couldn’t provide her patients with urgent treatment while also bleeding money because of an annoying internet issue.

A psychologist has been locked in a months-long battle with Optus fighting for thousands of dollars worth of compensation after her internet failed during dozens of critical telehealth sessions with vulnerable people.

Leah Dodsworth, 45, from Melbourne, specialises in helping people with trauma, many of them former emergency services workers who are often suicidal, and says it’s crucial they access the care they need.

Ms Dodsworth works primarily from home and so relies on video calls to treat her clients.

But at the end of October, warning signs appeared on her screen in the middle of her video calls warning her of “low bandwidth” and “unstable network connection”.

She said it got to a point where the connectivity issues were impacting “every single” therapy session — sometimes freezing her screen as much as six times in a one-hour long appointment — resulting in frustrated patients having to repeat themselves multiple times.

“I had no choice but to cancel a high number of patient sessions, not only significantly disrupting their access to treatment but also at an enormous financial cost due to the loss of income,” Ms Dodsworth told news.com.au.

As a sole trader, she calculated she incurred losses of $14,000 over the five week period she tried to resolve the issues and thinks Optus should foot the bill.

The warning message that appeared on Ms Dodsworth’s video calls with clients.

The slow internet also caused normal sites to time out.

Ms Dodsworth urgently got in touch with her internet provider, Optus, as soon as the issues started, but that’s where she claims the real nightmare began.

Optus ran her through some basic trouble shooting steps that didn’t work then suggested it might be an issue with her devices.

This prompted her to buy a new laptop, an expense she said she could “ill afford” but unfortunately the internet problem remained.

The psychologist was assigned two different Optus case managers and had no way to get in touch so had to wait for them to call her.

On several occasions, Ms Dodsworth cleared her schedule for the day waiting for a call which never came.

Ms Dodsworth missed a call on a Saturday from the telco, then managed to get in touch with them on Sunday and arranged a call for the Monday. They never rang her that day but she was advised he might call any time so she kept the day free.

The same thing happened several times. Once, she was on a call with Optus asking why her case manager hand’t called yet. It was then that he called her. She missed the call.

Another time, she arranged two times for the Optus worker to call during the day. The telco employee called her after business hours, at 5.12pm, and although she rang back within a minute, he didn’t pick up.

An Optus spokesperson told news.com.au “Our records show that our technical support team made multiple attempts to contact the customer by phone on different days”.

Ms Dodsworth claims she was “gaslit”, with Optus telling her it was an issue with NBN and not them and that the problem had arisen due to a weather event.

“I live in an apartment, no one else was having these issues,” she said.

“I do not sit on irrelevant zoom meetings or do data entry but treat psychologically unwell patients.

“Optus was literally endangering lives,” she said. “Our second largest telco did not care about these people.”

Ms Dodsworth says she is owed $14,000 from session cancellations.

The psychologist says it has ground her business to a halt.

Ms Dodsworth rented out an office to work without disruption while trying to get to the bottom of the Optus issue, racking up even more costs.

She was bleeding money and, frustrated, asked her Optus case manager how he would pay his bills if he was making thousands less than normal. He allegedly laughed in response.

“I was horrified,” Ms Dodsworth said.

She claims that Optus finally acknowledged there was a connectivity issue and said verbally over the phone that she would be “compensated from the beginning when the problem was fixed”.

She sent a follow up email about this and to date no-one has responded to it.

At first, Optus said they would be sending out a technician, but then changed their mind. Instead, they charged her $30 for a speed pack which was meant to resolve the issue but again, didn’t.

At the end of November, she said she received an incredibly “dismissive” message from an Optus customer service rep.

He told her he was “sorry for the inconvenience” and “I do understand that staying connected is important nowadays to get in touch with work, families, friends and loved ones”.

Ms Dodsworth was furious. She felt like they didn’t understand the importance of her work and they were acting like she “was being mildly inconvenienced by not being able to have zoom cocktails with my friends.”

Leah Dodsworth spent more money booking out a temporary office.

Optus is refusing to give her any more compensation. Picture: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Fed up, Ms Dodsworth decided it was time to call it quits but she found it tricky to end the contract with Optus as she still had an open case with them.

In the end, Optus offered to provide her with a credit for the last two months of her internet and refund the speed pack purchase.

They also added $149.00 of credit to cover the interim broadband she purchased.

Ms Dodsworth said that’s not good enough after the stress she endured and also the losses she made over the five weeks.

She has lodged a complaint with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to pursue the matter further and has since switched telco providers.

“While it is disappointing that we are unable to reach an agreeable solution, we are collaborating with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to achieve an outcome that works for both parties,” an Optus spokesman said in a statement to news.com.au.

They said they acknowledged Ms Dodsworth had “noted” a disruption to her internet service.

The spokesman insisted that she “was able to access her internet service during this majority of this time. Therefore, nbn did not send out a technician”.