What do you think about the Optus 200GB compensation?
I don't seem to be able to find info if this compensation covers reseller prepaid SIMs such as Coles Mobile and Amaysim.
Optus 200GB Compensation, Too Little Too Late?
BendBridge on 10/11/2023 - 07:25
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For some maybe, for others no.
It is impossible to please everyone.
But it would be better PR.For PAYG its harder and then complicated further by companies that on sell the optus network.
If they were to offer a free recharge valued at what you paid last recharge (pro rata 1 month if people pay yearly) it would be a good PR move imo.Extra data offer doesn’t recognise, compensate or relate in any way to the total loss of service. The majority of inconvenience or loss is virtually unquantifiable. The extra data will likely be unused - most are on the data plan that suits their useage.
Optus would get less kickback from a free month/last recharge credit style offer from a PR perspective. And the CEO could probably fund it out of petty cash (/s).
Agreed on the difficulty on calculating a reasonable value for compensation. Going down this thought process however, what is allowed via the contract?
You'll probably find in the contract that Optus excludes any liability due to consequential loss due to their failure to provide their service. So then what would be reasonable compensation in line with the contract? Probably just a refund on the service fees for the duration of the outage. So say 1 day outage @ $100 per month = ~$4 in compensation. Doesn't sound great does it?
I figure Optus feels that the non-insignificant data allowance is good compensation (I disagree, as explained in my comment above) and I also agree with the businesses that this does not compensate them for lost business, revenue, etc. and agree with you that this will be hard to quantify, likely expensive for Optus, and probably not in line with their contracts.
TL;DR: it's a (profanity) sandwich…
I guess using your formula then the CEO should only get paid for that 30 second speech she gave. What did she do for the rest of the year ? She didnt even write the speech…
Does your electricity company have to compensate you whenever there's a blackout?
Does your water company have to compensate you whenever the water goes off for a little while?
Does your car manufacturer have to compensate you if your car breaks down?
Why should your telecomms supplier have to compensate you if the phone stops working for a little while? They don't guarantee you 100% up time. Complex high technology fails every so often precisely because it is complex high technology. The fact it is complex high technology means it may well be really hard to prevent it failing and to diagnose the failure.
If you're a consumer of complex high technology you've got to expect that it occasionally won't work. Hardware can't be guaranteed to never break. Software has bugs, and encounters scenarios its designers never anticipated, and handles them poorly.
If you build a business based on it you either have to pay for redundancy or expect that sometimes you won't be able to do business for a little while.
Sorry, that's real life.
Does your electricity company have to compensate you whenever there's a blackout?
Yes there is a service guarantee in the agreement for extended outages. An outage like the one optus had would trigger a payment.
Does your car manufacturer have to compensate you if your car breaks down?
Yes under warranty they give a loaner car while being fixed
If an electricity provider caused a blackout across the entire nation then yes, I would expect compensation. The electricity provider analogy is similar to a couple of mobile phone towers going down in a local area. Of course there wouldn't be any compensation then.
Similarly if the water company stopped delivering water across the entire nation, or a software upgrade caused all Teslas in Australia to suddenly stop working.
A business should have backup plans for when technology fails. That is a given. My question is did Optus have a backup plan for when they rolled out a dodgy software upgrade in the middle of the night?
For a lot of mobile phone users, having a couple of mobile phone towers go down in a local area would be equivalent in impact to those specific users.
If an electricity provider caused a blackout across the entire nation then yes, I would expect compensation.
We had that scenario here in South Australia a few years ago. The power went off for the whole state. A transmission tower delivering power from the windfarms blew over, shutting off that source supply of power. That caused the transmission line from the eastern states to overload, and it shut down. That caused the few generators running that were the only remaining source of power to overload and shut down. The whole state had no power.
Of course there was no compensation. No-one wanted to have to pay in their power bills for a power system that always had enough redundancy and standby capacity in it to cope with any situation, so instead they paid the price of having no power for a few hours.
"Of course there was no compensation."
we got something on a different occasion, can't recall how much but we were out of the state which made it amusing
.
Presumably they would have had a rollback … but as a side note, damn I'd hate to be that guy that rolled out that update that broke everything!!
Does your gas company have to compensate you whenever the gas goes off for a while?
Ah yes, but the memory of those cold showers lasts a lifetime.
I remember that well. was during my VCE year.
We switched to heating water with something like this, https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/280896469951
bucket bath is still better than cold showers
on the Optus note, all my business mobiles were down.
luckily I don't use optus for my office internet or landline they worked so we were fine.I have a 4G modem on my office router but thats also an optus 4G sim so that would have also been down
if its critical to business you need to have a back up solution from another provider, at least for office internet etc.
$10 for 20 days? So Optus owes everyone 50c.
With the current inflation rates and accumulation since 1998 it would be a lot more than that
Does your electricity company have to compensate you whenever there's a blackout?
Yes, they sure do if it's a significant one like Optus' (profanity) up.
Claimed a entire fridge worth of food from a Vic distributor a few years ago. ~$250.
Do you fly? Are you OK knowing the technology running the aircraft could fail totally and you may fall out of the sky? And that’s OK?
High tech needs adequate redundancy built in. Always.What's reasonable redundancy? For aviation its okay for aircraft to fail and fall out of the sky once every 10 million flight hours (for an aircraft type) - including system redundancy.
I assume Optus doesn't have a quantitative hazard analysis for network failure, but the probability of complete failure is never zero.
I bet the second largest telco in the country does have a quantitative risk analysis and many formally documented controls and redundancies actually… my company is a fraction of the size and we do - there are various telco and IT industry guidelines for acceptable levels of downtime, change management protocols etc
just occasionally they can still f… up. … usually human error not following one of the steps properly… but as you say, probability is never zero.
Yes they do. We had a wild storm in SA last year and our area lost power for more than 24 hours. SA Power Network paid us $200+ as compensation at the end of the FY.
electricity and water billing is usage based. Optus is not. I get charged for the day - I expect compensation if I can't use it for the day. 200GB is not compensation.
If my car breaksdown during warranty period - yes, the car manufacturer compensates me by NOT CHARGING me.
complex high technology
This sounds like terminology used by incompetent people who like to talk down to their customers.
The water suppliers have timelines for outages. If they aren't met, you receive compensation in the form of a discount on the quarterly bill.
A few incorrect examples, but I take your point related to redundancy. Redundancy does not preclude Optus from compensation large scale critical services outage. Don't be fooled, in the modern day communication is just as critical to business as water and electricity.
What do you think about the Optus 200GB compensation?
Has zero value to me…. I don't use all my monthly data anyhow. So a bonus 200GB isn't going to do anything.
A free month of service would be better!
I feel bad for the lady who couldnt receive the call that her mom passed in the hospital.
I’m sure Cr@ptus will compensate her with 200GB like everyone else
Her story doesn't make a ton of sense though.
She dropped her mum and the hospital and left to go home? Might just be me but if my mum or dad were very sick and needing a hospital, you couldn't pay me enough to leave.Anyway, for the mum to die shortly after, I imagine her condition wasn't great, there would be some indication here that there's a chance this is the last time you'll see her - more of a reason to hang around.
Secondly, I refused to accept all this happened without her realising even one time that the outage was occurring. Maybe the hospital was impacted (many were), or making a simple call "hey ____, mums in hospital" would have revealed it instantly. So in that case you have to make the choice of stay, or swing by a servo and grab a Telstra Sim on the way home to keep lines of communication open. How she discovered her mum was sick, got her to a hospital, got her settled in and drove home without once noticing the outage baffles me.
We got caught out by it (no mobile) and bought Telstra esims to keep as a backup in case this ever happens again. Optus have no SLAs around service uptime so the responsibility is on the consumer to have a backup for if / when something like this happens.
I saw she was very close by (<10 mins). Someone in that condition may still live for days/weeks, I guess she still had to live her life but was close enough to say goodbye if her condition deteriorated
MrKnowItAll, perhaps you don't know it all but they have a thing called visiting hours and limits on visitor numbers. So maybe they couldn't pay you to leave, but they could actually require it and have you escorted out! Even with a minor/child in hospital overnight, I have even seen the context where only one parent is allowed to stay so the other parent has had to stay at a hotel nearby and very much relying on a call if there is an issue. For adults there is often no one allowed to stay at certain hours.
Additionally, this was obviously an elderly person and that daughter was an adult mother of enough age to have her own kids, so it would be very normal for people to have a young family to support, jobs etc, to have to leave the hospital and go home or run other errands whilst their elderly parents were in hospital nearby, which can be for an extended period of time (days, weeks, months) - it does not mean they don't care a lot.
Speaking from experience regarding people important to me being in intensive care among other wards over a long period of time (the sorts of rooms a bunch of visitors can't just hang out in forever), although I did spend a LOT of time at the hospital and got very little sleep, I did still go away and get proper sleep 10 minutes away in a proper bed instead of laying in neck wrecking armchairs at the hospital sometimes, and go basic grocery / supplies shopping etc and other essential things from time to time over the many weeks. You expect to be contacted immediately if required and stay in the general area. There's only so much you can do for someone in that situation and they sleep a lot also. The hospital staff would probably encourage it and suggest it is a good thing to go rest and they will call you if something changes so the patients can rest and not have visitors becoming tired zombies hanging around 24/7.
Additionally, not every busy parent in that situation is glued to their phone all the time, especially if at home with cabled internet / wifi to realise there was an outage on their mobile etc - they expect it to audibly ring.
Your refusal to accept basic facts based solely on how you would anticipate it for you (without a lot of personal experience in this specific context I expect), is just plain inaccurate for some people - It was a very plausible story IMHO.
I've actually done a bit more research and it looks like there is indeed more to the story. A subreddit of doctors has a comment saying the grandmother had died before the outage even occurred and that they weren't able to reach her to notify her of the death. There's also interesting comments at the top implying people just drop off their elderly this time of year.. sad :(
Anyway, If this is true (will we ever really know?) then I was clearly wrong, she'd have been dropped off the day before, likely on a ward and the daughter went home due to visiting hours. That would also explain how she didn't notice the outage as with working wifi, it's pretty tough to tell.
That also means Optus didn't rob her of her chance to say goodbye or that they're responsible for this grandmother dying alone. Which begs the question why someone would go to the media to talk about compensation / money..
Classic media dramatising to sell their story
200Gb compensation is basically free to Optus. Most people won't use it, and even for those that do, the cost for Optus to provide the service is probably in the cents range.
I'm sure Optus will claim 10 million customers getting 200Gb of 'free' data at a retail cost of maybe $40 each is $400M of 'compensation' delivered to customers, so shut up and stop complaining you peasant.
That is the reality.
Optus will need to manage their reputational damage, which I think could be extensive. If you are an Optus shareholder, I wonder what compensation could be sought for the likely drop in share value?Tax deductible of course.
Their logic is that 200GB costs $100 as an optional add-on, ipso facto, they're 'giving' everyone $100. Which is complete bollocks. No one pays for that, because most people have already bought the plan they can live with. The fact it's only until end of the year is the cherry on top. Stingy doesn't even begin to describe this.
Will she get a nice bonus on her way out like Allan did?
Alan Joyce or Allen Lew?
Perhaps, with the role to be filled by Scott Morrison (her old boss).
Isn't it still on-going whether or not they can crawl back/cancel his bonus?
200GB, Now that is really good. Pity it needs to be used by the end of the year. Oh hang on wait a minute, I'm on an unlimited plan.
Ok but.. what sort of compo for the people and businesses on optus nbn who had no connection etc.. who already had unlimited data on those plans?? Get any compo??
And had to use up all their data on their boost mobile sims…? Why don’t they work with all those telcos and get the 200gb added to those telco plans too..
No word from Circles Life yet, neither for the outage nor compensation.
Customers should just petition the board and have Rosmarin sacked (without her 'performance' bonus)
That would be partial compo. Then write to the senate committee investigating Optus, who I am sure will be found to be covering up what really happened until they get exposed. CEO has made matters worse.For that reason the board should have ditched her last time when her hand picked security guy blew it. Also it's time for Optus to explain what changes were made before and after the 1st hacking event, and what the salaries and bonuses are/were linked to those employees. Hopefully a whistle-blower comes fwd and sheds light on what went on this timeRosmarin walking from Sydney Harbour Bridge to Bondi, naked, hair shorn, getting pelted by rotten fruit, with a nun and a bell shouting "shame"?
As it stands, the 'bonuses' seem to be unconnected with exemplary performance, rather just a way to pump up pay packets. It should be the norm that when there is a stuff up, there are NO bonuses across the entire company, and indeed no pay to the CEO at all.
Failure doesn't hurt, and it should.
Customers should vote with their feet and leave.
Most of them can't be arsed switching. That's what keeps Optus going
Less people might make the network perform better…
I got an email from Amaysim saying their really sorry for the recent outage and they have given me free unlimited talk and txt to use untill the 31st Dec.
But the funny thing is, I'm already on the unlimited talk and text (no data) plan for the year lol
They gave my colleague 60 gig data. He already has 5TB banked, yet he was so happy about it.
Still silent from Coles Mobile (Optus reseller). Not even an email about the outage, like it didn't existed.
That's strange you didn't get anything as I got this text from coles mobile on Friday. I'm on the coles 60gb 365 day plan.
"Hi there, we understand how important it is for all our customers to be connected and we’re deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused by the recent network outage. We’re currently working on something for you to show our gratitude for your patience. You’ll receive an email soon with more details."
followed by this email on saturday
"Hi,
We understand how important it is for all our customers to be connected and we’re deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused by the recent network outage.
To thank you for your patience, as a valued Coles Mobile Prepaid customer, in the next two weeks we’ll be giving you 25GB bonus data to use in Australia for the remaining days of your current plan. If you don’t have an active recharge at the time, you’ll receive 25GB bonus data on your next recharge.
If you haven’t used up the bonus data by the time you reach expiry, it will roll over if you recharge before expiry or have an active AutoRecharge (data rollover limit of 50GB applies).
This one-time bonus will be available by 24/11/23 for application to your account as described above, and we’ll let you know when it’s ready for you to enjoy.
We’re here to help
For more information and FAQs, see our support page.Thanks,
The Coles Mobile Team"
What lacklustre offerings. Just enough data to reach the cap for rollover (with Aldi, mine's reached 200GB)
I got the 200gb.
My wife got a sorry email and thats it. Literally just a sorry.
Shes 6 months into a galaxy s23 $49 plan. I am a long term customer currently on a ozb 25% off $35 plan i think.
I got a sorry, but no data. Funny thing is I haven’t been with Optus (or a reseller) for ten years. But they obviously still have my personal data and have probably shared it with the world.
all optus customers must stand up together and cancel their plan. imagine if they loose 99% of their customer in a week.
yes some say what will it achieve as the damage/outtage already done?
the answer is to punish them, and give warning to others to take the leak/hack/outage seriously.
when voda optus tpg see wow customer really have that much power to bring a company like optus to its knees, we better be careful and check our systems etc etc.otherwise…. the others will just laughing hard they know there is punishment waiting
What will that achieve? It would bring the telco market back to a monopoly. Yes there is Vodafone, but they aren’t nearly as present in regional centres as Optus and Telstra. I recently travelled to WA and drove down south, and was surprised to see my Optus sim getting better signal than my Telstra one. Had a look at the ausphonetowers app, and surprisingly Optus has the same amount, if not more, towers in Margaret River/Busselton/Bunbury area than Telstra! My partner on the other hand whose with Kogan (Vodafone) lost complete coverage for 75% of the trip!!
It’s basic economics; with less competition, prices will go higher. I enjoy the better coverage that Telstra generally has, but with Optus gone, you’ll see Telstra increase their already exorbitant prices to something many can’t afford in this cost of living crisis.
Lol if you think 99% of their customers will cancel
imagine if they loose 99% of their customer in a week.
Then what, port to another telco? Imagine the wait time for millions of new customers…
Optus are very good at spin, but very bad at actual results or actual help that helps.
I’m on a $64/month plan with 250GB of data.
If Optus values 250GB at $64/month, they should at least give me the option of choosing the 200GB OR $50 as an apologyI think 10% off your next bill would have felt right to me. 200GB feels like Optus is laughing at us.
That would be $5 or even less to a lot of people. Don’t you think that would be a bit more insulting than actually compensating? Unless you mean to type 100%.
What if you have unlimited 5g broadband ? Data is useless it’s already unlimited.
Someone can’t do the math of (200GB+∞)?
Yeah Optus, that's like pouring a glass of water into a reservoir.
Think Optus is giving Damn to customers. Seems their business isn’t impacted by these customers leaving.
Do the thing. Create change.org page to ask question and to telecom minister/ Gov./ local Government bodies stating why do they think Optus should be given business when they had breach and major outage but no realisation.
Pretty sure Optus would change its tune.
Headline you won’t see: Optus CEO changes mind after reading OzB posts. (Or any other social media.)
And I can guarantee that all the resellers won't offer any compensation as it wasn't their fault! 🤦🤷🤦🤷
True. But Optus should probably do the right thing by providing the compensation.
Amaysim has contacted customers with its apologies and make-good offers.
For Unlimited customers, it is an extra 60GB of data (to be used by 31/12).
For PAYG customers, it is free standard national talk & text (also until 31/12).
Not much good to me, I will be porting out on Monday.Who will you be transferring too? I’m thinking of doing same thing
I have a heap of banked data, over 1 tb with amaysim…
Since my phone has dual SIM support, I myself, will get a cheapish Telstra SIM and use that as my main, and amaysim when I need big downloads….
Most people buy packages applicable to their anticipated usage. So an extra 200Gb of data is all smoke and mirrors as most people will not be able to / wish to consume the extra data.
To be fair, no amount of compensation will get any of us back that lost airtime. As an individual consumer, id be happy to forgo any financial compensation if the focus of financial compensation gies towards the small business owners, who thought they were being savy, by being optus.
This is the shittiest compensation I've ever seen. It's basically a (profanity) you to everyone. Zero cost to Optus and majority won't even use it.
Suggest everyone call up Optus and demand to terminate their contracts, a million TIO complaints would force their hand to actually compensate. Likely tens of thousands of small businesses that lost significant turnover that day, yet again they just have to cop it on the chin apparently.
If everybody on the Optus network moves elsewhere, won’t that reduce the performance of the remaining networks? Stay, please! Already my Telstra mobile drops calls just 7km’s from CBD and has become almost unusable. Same for neighbours because we are all out in the street when trying to make calls. Reporting to Telstra is met with denial as their maps show excellent 4 and 5g.
TIO
"I'm dyna-mite….."
I'm with Circles.Life and nothing even offered……
Go to the ombudsman and they will offer something
The CEO must be kicked out immediately without any compensation for handling rhis issue so poorly.
She was mocking Syd hairdresser publicly.
How dare you do that to customer?.
I believe they shold waive monthly charges for a month for all affected customers. Eventhough it is not much Optus can't afford more than that.Hey guys,
Just thought I'd add for those who need to sort out reliability:
On a lot of newer phones you can add a secondary phone number/provider as an eSim.
Some providers have 365 day expiry times, so you could just $30 on your credit and it let it sit there for the year.This means that you could for example have your normal plan with Vodaphone and keep a backup eSim that is ready to be used on Telstra, maybe even another backup awaiting to be used with Optus. Just put a reminder label on the back of your phone i.e. (credit expires 11/11/2024) and then cover your phone with a clear plastic case and you'll be ready for the next time.
You pay $X for a month of service and you didn’t receive a month of service so that month should be waived.
This is the best explanation, simple yet logical :)
Oh lucky I pay annually for a year of service!
Why would you expect the entire month to be waived if you paid for a month and received a month less 9 hours? Your expectations are completely unrealistic. Even business plans with an SLA don't work that way.
A day's worth then - which is fair.
All the plebs here crying murder becuase they couldn't access reddit and ozb for a few hours need to put a cork in it
As a business owner, I lost alot of SMSs and phone calls, I need my phone everyday to contact clients and I am on the road. I have to go to McDonalds or other chains to connect to their Wifi to chat to clients if they have whatsapp or messenger or instagram and even then, I have to wait for their reply.
I lost time and money and it delayed 3 days work…. so in my case, I can deal with a few hours down time but not a full on day.
So what do you think is a fair compensation?
Outages are a fact of life. The fact you're getting any compensation, whatsoever, is a bonus. Honestly, is this the first time you've had a problem with your internet?
As I said a few hours of down time is fine for me, not a whole day.
If you had a business where you're on call, on the road and need to talk to clients to deliver and have meetings with, then you should have some empathy, but you don't.
And no, I am NOT getting any compensation cause I am with a reseller.
@hasher22: Yeah, I'm hearing that a lot. Most of the rabbits making noise aren't themselves directly affected too badly, but are angry someone else totally was!
Of this length? Yes. We're not talking about NBN going down for an hour of scheduled maintenance, or a quick drop in reception. This went on for a business day, which is unprecedented.
Outages are a fact of life
Maybe in the backwater of Australia where people voted to cling to the copper network.
Totally useless, I lost a day of work as all my services were out a whole day, I don't use more than 15gb on my mobile data a month what the hell will I do with 200gb?
I have just received an email from Optus Mobile. They offerred me 25GB for my plan (120GB 365-day) to be used before the plan runs out. I still have 11 months to go.
Most people get way more data than what they actually use.
So offering free data as compensation is like offering someone a free drink at an open bar, or a entree at a buffet. i.e. It is something that they already have and will not use.
If your really angered by Optus outage churn.
Give your business to another provider.
Only thing that will drive real change.
Two major crisis in a year should be clear & adequate warning for people to leave Optus. Shouldn't have to accept this terrible level of service.
Fair enough, so a free month of calls/data would suffice (for those on plans)?
And for those on PAYG?