Are You Taking Optus to The TIO for Losses Incurred during Their Outage?

machej on 19/11/2023 - 22:16

Since Optus' outage it appears that Optus has been quietly settling monetary compensation with a number of their users. I could only find a couple of references in the Aus media.

Given the impact of the outage and the likelihood of financial loss, have you considered taking Optus to the TIO to make a financial claim?

TIO reference indicating that compensation may be possible even on retail phone plans that don't have an SLA agreement typically: https://www.tio.com.au/news/support-consumers-and-small-busi…

Optus has paid out $36,000 in compensation for last week’s major outage, according to chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.

She said 8500 customers had sought compensation from the telco giant, totalling $430,000. Optus is in the process of assessing the veracity of those compensation claims, Bayer Rosmarin said.

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Comments

  • Some Human on 19/11/2023 - 22:43
    +2

    No, I think it would be a waste of time.

    Because I'm with woolworths.

  • miwahni on 20/11/2023 - 01:08

    I guess there would be a lot of business claims, where proprietors can show the actual loss incurred (comparison of takings on normal Wednesdays for example) and these people should be compensated IMO. Or Uber drivers etc who rely on their phones for their job allocation.
    Not sure that your average punter would be able to prove much of a loss though.

  • Downvoter on 20/11/2023 - 02:45

    Lol

  • EightImmortals on 20/11/2023 - 07:19
    +1

    Why? What were my material losses? If I ran a business that was reliant on the service then maybe.

  • Seraphin7 on 20/11/2023 - 09:54
    +1

    While I'm no fan of Optus … why anyone would use them is actually beyond me based on my interactions with them … a lot of the carry on about this has actually been over the top.

    For the average punter … no doubt it's a pain right up the jacksie to be without your phone for 14 hours (or whatever it was) but what was the actual impact of this? Little more than inconvenience when you get down to it.

    For many businesses, the impact is certainly greater, but at some point every business needs to consider their operational risks. If the POS services are reliant on internet, having a secondary option needs to be considered. A Telstra 5G modem (for example) is available for about $100 a month … sounds like a good back up option.

    Equally for those who claim the ability to make phone calls is critical to their health/wellbeing, again a secondary pre-paid back up option for maybe $200 a year needs to be considered. If my health genuinely depended on the ability to make calls, I'd want a back up option if my primary was unavailable for some reason.

    You then ultimately get to scenarios where there is no viable/economic back up option. That is where the attention needs to be.

    • machej on 20/11/2023 - 10:12

      Depends, as per the comment above a rideshare driver could have lost a fair bit of their day's salary had they not bought a Sim. I assume couriers might be in a similar situation.

    • stickingly on 21/11/2023 - 08:14
      +1

      I could not agree with you more. No internet is 100% reliable, for a range of reasons.

      I tell my customers that if Internet is that important to their business they should have a backup link using a different medium from a completely separate provider (like Telstra 4g/5g if they are with optus and vice versa). Even executives from the big telcos carry SIM cards from their competitors for use in emergencies.

  • pharkurnell on 20/11/2023 - 09:56

    No..

  • apple2016 on 20/11/2023 - 10:16

    Not really…. never put all your eggs in one basket!!!

  • Protractor on 20/11/2023 - 11:02

    At least the manikin in charge has finally snatched it. Good riddance.

  • randomusername2017 on 20/11/2023 - 13:00

    Just take KBR to TIOfor farewell drinks..

  • jizmo on 20/11/2023 - 15:44
    +1

    If the power went out, would businesses sue the power company or have a backup generator in place?

    • machej on 20/11/2023 - 16:18

      There are SLAs so the answer is yes. It's much clearer for outages as they're on each distributor's website.

  • Protractor on 20/11/2023 - 17:00

    Gladys arrives on a white horse clutching her 'drenching in ethics' CV and a reference from Scomo>
    https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/technology/former-n…

    Optus are a lost cause

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