Optus outage: Angry customers say it’s time to move on

Optus customers across the ­country say it’s time to move on, with many reporting their ­relationship with the telco was already hanging by a thread.

Customers seek help from an Optus store in the Brisbane CBD. Picture: David Clark

Optus customers across the ­country say it’s time to move on, with many reporting their ­relationship with the telco was already hanging by a thread after a major cyber breach last year that exposed the personal details of millions of people.

Communication following the breach just wasn’t good enough, many have said, and the company’s lack of communication ­following Wednesday’s major outage was the final nail in the coffin for some.

In the Sydney inner west suburb of Annandale, Humm Coffee Roasters owner Seongjin Lyu said after several disruptions to the service, he would now shift to another provider.

“We’re now planning to move on. It’s not the first time, our issues with Optus have been more frequent than with any other provider,” he said. “All of our point-of-sale and ordering technology uses the internet and if we have no internet, we can’t use any of it.”

Mr Lyu said Optus had not provided any kind of warning or messaging about the outage. “This morning we thought our phones had issues when we woke up and saw SOS on our screens,” he said. “I understand there is nothing we can do but there has been no communication whatsoever.”

Dominque Stevens, who manages Vinnies on Elizabeth St in Sydney’s Surry Hills, is also fed up with the telco. “When I woke up this morning I had no notification of an outage. I thought maybe there was something wrong with my SIM,” she said.

Ms Stevens was able to contact her daughter via WhatsApp throughout the day as her home internet service was with Telstra. “First there was the breach and I was not impressed with that as the only communication I got was one email and a couple of texts. I thought that was pretty disgusting,” she said.

“For the amount of money that I pay, it’s just not worth it,” she said, adding that her plan had risen from $50 per month to $75.

Next door at Pakistani and Indian restaurant Himalaya, owner Mohammad Islam hadn’t been able to contact his family all day.

“I live in the west so if anything happens to my wife or kids, I won’t be able to talk to them,” he said.

While Himalaya didn’t use Optus’ internet services, he and many of his customers used its ­mobile services.

Mr Islam said about $500 worth of food had been given to customers on Wednesday who were unable to pay for their meal.

“About 20 customers have promised to come back and pay because they couldn’t access their mobile banking,” he said.

For Karissa Breen, owner of media company KBI.Media, “waking up with no internet or phone connectivity blindsided me”.

“Usually it’s the internet, sometimes phone but very rarely both for this long period of time. I felt a bit stuck – as I had no internet to write any emails, messages or make any phone calls to my local team who are primarily in Victoria,” she said.

Ms Breen said the being online was crucial to performing even basic tasks as much of the products and tools KBI.Media used were cloud based – meaning they were stored online and accessed via ­mobile or web applications.

National Retail Association director Rob Godwin said that a day after the RBA’s interest rate hike, the Optus outages had dealt retailers and their operations yet another blow.

“Small businesses seem to be the most adversely affected,” said Mr Godwin, noting EFTPOS was down for non-Optus users as well, and could not be fixed Wednesday since some of the big banks were uncontactable.

“This is costing businesses thousands of dollars in sales that they are now in dire need given yesterday’s rate hike … It’s times like these we see the necessity for cash to remain a fail-safe option for payment.”