Optus customers threatening to leave the telco are securing sizeable discounts on their mobile phone and internet plans following its 16-hour-long network meltdown last week.
This is despite Optus boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin telling investors and analysts in a leaked audio recording of a private briefing held last Thursday that customers don’t want a cash refund to the equivalent of $1.60 each, and that the company has no intention of discounting heavily.
Eliot Hastie from Sydney secured a discount from Optus after the outage.
While the telco has offered customers various incentives to stay – including the equivalent of more than $100 in free data for mobile subscribers, or 200GB for eligible postpaid customers – some customers are negotiating discounts of between 17 and 25 per cent off their monthly plans.
Eliot Hastie, from inner Sydney, secured a 25 per cent discount on his $39 monthly mobile plan with Optus, bringing it down to $30 per month for 12 months – a total saving of $108.
“I rang up Optus after they announced the 200GB data compensation and just explained to them that I am on an unlimited data plan, so 200GB is not compensation,” he said.
“I think it’s disgraceful that that was their offer. Some people lost business, lost money, lost the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones, and then to only get 200GB as compensation is a joke and it’s disrespectful,” he added.
He said the whole process of getting the discount took 12 minutes from start to finish.
“I didn’t even have to argue my point – the guy spoke to his supervisor for me and offered it.”
Lucas, from Melbourne’s south-east, secured a discount of $180 from Optus after the outage.
Hastie said he’s used Optus as his mobile provider since moving back to Australia almost eight years ago and for his home internet for six years. He said he chose the telco because it offered the best value.
“I recommend all people check their plans and just see if Optus can do better than 200GB,” he said.
Hastie is not alone in securing a better deal. Lucas from Melbourne, who did not wish to provide his last name for privacy reasons, said he negotiated a $15-a-month discount on his home broadband plan – a total annual saving of $180.
“I was paying $1080 for my plan [per year], so it represents a 16 per cent discount,” he said.
On the morning of the outage, Lucas was forced to use his wife’s Vodafone mobile as a hotspot to connect to the internet to work. But when she had to leave for work with her phone, he had to go to a nearby McDonald’s car park to use the free Wi-Fi.
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As a form of redundancy going forward, he said he would buy a new mobile SIM from Woolworths, which uses the Telstra network, because he couldn’t afford another day-long outage. Despite Optus’ recent outage and the data breach last year, he said he’d remain with the company.
“It’s a pain to move,” he said. “We have Fetch TV and I like that because I get the sports package.”
To secure his discount, he said it was worth visiting a telco comparison website to see other offers, take screenshots of them, and then ask Optus to at least price-match rivals.
“The first response when you’re annoyed with someone is an emotional response, and when you’re emotional, you need to not just blindly follow it and be aggressive to the customer service representative,” he said.
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“State your current personal circumstances and what you feel is the reason why you need a discount. For me, it had been a price rise, my data had been compromised as part of [last year’s] breach, Optus Sport went from free to costing each month, and then the outage.”
The discounting comes after The Australian newspaper published comments made by Optus chief executive Bayer Rosmarin to investors and analysts the day after the outage.
In the call, when she was asked a question she interpreted as an enquiry about whether the telco would “abandon reason and start discounting heavily”, she said Optus was not looking to deviate from its commitment “to profitable, sustainable growth and delivering great value for our customers”.
“That is our strategy, and as horrible as [last Wednesday] was, and as much as we let our customers down, and we’ll do everything we can to make up for it – at this stage, I don’t see us completely abandoning a strategy that we’ve been committed to.”
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She could also be heard saying that the telco was “not talking about direct compensation, because if you took an average customer on a $49 plan, and they didn’t have service for a day, that would equate to about $1.60, and we don’t think that’s what customers want, is a credit for $1.60”.
She said: “We’re looking at what we can do to make our customers feel like they’ve been heard, that they know that we care, that we understand that we let them down, and to try and give them something more valuable.”
Eliot said he would most likely stay with Optus until at least the end of the discount. “I don’t see a reason to move unless there is a cheaper internet and phone bundle out there.”
In a statement, Optus said it had made a range of offers available on its postpaid, prepaid and internet plans.
“In addition, Optus has a dedicated specialist team and a complaint handling process in place to assess complaints about the outage,” a spokesperson said.
“We will look at the customer’s specific circumstances and work with the customer on what options we can take to resolve their concerns.”
The company is also working with the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman to help customers “find solutions that best suit their needs”.
“We encourage any with concerns to contact the Optus Specialist Care team, Optus Business Centre or Business Care on 133 343 or via the Optus complaints line.”
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