More Optus arrogance and contempt for its customers

OPTUS has been forced to halt the planned shut down of its optushome.com.au email domain after users complained of insufficient warning.

Thousands of long-time Optus customers awoke this morning to find empty email inboxes after the telco last night flicked the off switch to its optushome.com.au email domain server.

Optus says it warned subscribers of the impending change -- a migration to a new domain, optusnet.com.au -- in an April newsletter but admitted it failed to issue any follow-up warnings.

The shutting down of the domain server meant that emails sent to customers with @optushome.com.au addresses disappeared into the internet ether or bounced back to the sender’s address.

But angry customers swarmed Optus's customer service hotline, saying they weren't aware of the closure.

One unhappy customer in Sydney expressed his disappointment that the telco failed to put in place an email redirect. He hopes Optus will learn from its mistake when it moves to complete the migration.

“Optus should have been more direct when notifying people about this change rather than hiding it in a newsletter.

“The ramifications are not just to the thousands of Optus customers but it’s a pain for any subscriptions people have, any software upgrades that are registered with that specific email address, bank statements and more," he said.

Optus refused to say why a simple domain name redirect was not put in place to avoid any disruption to customers’ email services.

An Optus spokeswoman said the migration process began yesterday afternoon but has since been put on hold while new notification procedures are put in place.

“Customers will be notified in the coming weeks regarding the date of the termination of the affected domain names. Optus apologises for any inconvenience,” she said.

The spokeswoman said the migration was implemented to reduce high-levels of spam and that only those customers who have been a customer with the telco since before 2002, when the optusnet.com.au domain was introduced, were affected by the change.

This includes all email addresses that sit on Optus’s microplex.com.au, mpx.com.au and optushome.com.au domains. All of these will eventually be migrated to the optusnet.com.au domain.

Source

Letter to Manager, Optus landline accounts

RE: 3391 xxxx

I draw your attention to the enclosed correspondence.

I strongly object to the time it took to restore my phone service. I was without use of the line for roughly a month and I advise that I will be deducting one month's rental charge from any future payments that I make. You may wish to pass an equivalent credit to the account to resolve the matter.

The other person in the building whom your technician apparently cut off (Mr. Miranda) had his service restored today by a Telstra technician without affecting my service. His experience in getting technical service that was both prompt and competent is a sad contrast with your performance in my case.

Letter to the TIO

Three weeks ago I wrote the enclosed letter to Optus. They have of course not replied.

They have however done SOMETHING. About a week ago I got a dialling tone back on my phone but the line was so noisy that the phone was still unusable.

Now today the snap crackle and pop is gone and my phone is completely "fixed"

They have fixed it, however, by cutting off the phone of someone else in the building and giving me his line. His phone is now dead.

That is so stupid that I am at loss to find words to describe it.

Since Optus will not communicate with me, would you PLEASE find someone at Optus capable of acting constructively in this matter? I fear that they will "fix" the other guy's line by cutting mine off again.

While you are talking to them you might suggest that they waive one month's line rental on my phone -- as that is roughly how long I had no use of it

Letter to Landline Accounts, Optus

Re: Ph. 3391 xxxx

The phone service above was originally taken out by Judith B**. She left these premises some years ago but advised you that I was authorized to operate the account. I have no information about her present whereabouts

Since her departure I have used the service and paid all your bills promptly.

I have however not had any service for over a week now. The phone is "dead"

Please advise whether this is a line fault or whether it is the result of some action on your part.

In either case I will not be paying any more bills unless the service is restored.

Optus: A thoroughly nasty and evasive company

Knowing how they treat their customers, it is no surprise to hear how they treat their dealers. My local phone shop has broken with them. I now begin to understand why

OPTUS could face a costly backlash from its dealer network as seven parties prepare to file a class action in a bid to recoup allegedly withheld commission payments.

It is understood a draft filing has been prepared by the law firm representing the dealers and is likely to be lodged with the Federal Court in about a month.

Dealers resell Optus products and services, earning commission on the sale and a trailing commission based on a customer's monthly account.

It is understood the dealers' dispute with Optus flows from the telco's alleged failure to make ongoing commission payments over a number of years.

An Optus spokesperson said there were no court actions or class actions involving unpaid commissions or other issues.

The spokesperson did not directly respond to a question about whether commission payments had been paid in full to Optus dealers.

"Optus is committed to fulfilling its obligations to its dealers at all times," the spokesperson said.

"In the event of a dispute with our dealers ... we would generally resolve the issue through negotiation or mediation." It is believed the dealers have alleged that millions of dollars worth of payments have been withheld.

Any decision against Optus would open the door for similar actions by others in the telco's 1500-strong dealer network.

It is understood Optus has previously reached settlements with a number of dealers for payouts worth millions of dollars.

Optus did not respond to questions about whether settlements had been reached previously with dealers.

Source

Letter TO: Accounts, Optus prepaid mobile

Yesterday I went online and topped up my prepaid a/c for phone 0423 XXXXXX

Shortly afterward I rang 555 to check that the new balance had been applied. It had.

I checked with my credit card provider this morning and the appropriate debit has been made

Yet I received a text message from you this morning telling me to recharge or my account would be suspended shortly

Please explain

I also note that I was on a plan which gave me 12 months to use the funds but my enquiry to 555 told me I had only 6 months

Please explain

Failing a prompt and satisfactory reply from you, I will hand this matter to the TIO. I have had experience with your scatterbrained "service" before, you see.

Update July 3

I received a letter today saying that they are looking into it!

An email from an Optus insider:

I was incredibly impressed that you were posting this information online. It's extremely important that the public can see exactly how dodgy Optus is. They may have been a champion of the customers 10-15 years ago, but now they are worse than Telstra.

I worked for Optus for several years until a short while ago, and I watched everything around me continue to fall apart.

I was there when Optus started switching customers to that terrible Reitz computer system (both postpaid AND prepaid customers had to suffer), I was there when they launched that Optus Wireless Fusion package (which was so bad that they had to stop selling it for a while).

I was there when they released the iPhone, and then when the flood of angry calls came in from iPhone customers who couldn't use the service because of our terrible 3G speeds.


It may be the worst company I have ever worked for, my colleagues all suffered nothing but constant stress and frustration.

Most Optus staff start putting weight on very quickly, I myself gained 10kg while I was there. The only thing that kept me going was the glasses of straight liquor I was drinking every single night, and even sometimes during my lunchbreaks at work.

I'm unemployed at the moment, and that feels like a promotion compared to what I had to go through at Optus.

When you work for a company like Optus, there's only 2 ways you can deal with the constant stress.

One way is to do everything you can to do the right thing for customers. Take the time, fix their problems and get constant praise for being the first person to help them. Go above and beyond, spend an hour on the phone calling other departments to get it fixed. Call them back every day to give them an update on whether or not their problem is resolved.

That's what I did, and it turned me into a depressed overweight alcoholic, but at least I could sleep at night without feeling like a criminal. But you don't meet your stats/targets, and you won't have a chance of getting any special rewards or bonuses.

The second way is to become just another call centre robot. Don't care about the person on the other end, the company has made it so hard to do the right thing that you may as well just give up and start giving people the runaround. Listen for "trigger words" during the call, any reason you can to dump them through to another department. These are the people who achieve/exceed their targets and get rewarded with big bonuses and prizes.

I'm absolutely thrilled that this new Vodafone/Three merger will make them the #2 mobile telco in Australia. Most young people seem to be with both of those companies, and if they start getting free calls between Vodafone and Three mobiles then Optus is going to lose a lot of their youth base. It's not cool to be with Optus, the only hope they have is to try to revamp their Virgin Mobile brand (which has better customer service and plans anyway).

If you have any problems or questions relating to anything at Optus, send me an email and I'll be happy to tell you what I know.

I've already started posting this information online, if I said I despised this company it would be an understatement.

They've made life hell for so many customers and staff, just to try to boost their profits. That's inexcusable in my opinion.

Optus gives away family's phone number

Anybody can make a mistake but getting the arrogant b*stards to acknowledge their mistakes is the hard part. That people have to go to the media to get any attention is a disgrace. It once took me a year, innumerable emails and phone calls plus the assistance of the TIO before I got them to fess up that their system was at fault for the difficulties I was having

A FAMILY that had the same contact details for 15 years are angry their phone number was given to a family in the next suburb.

Ruth and Bob Pye had been Optus customers for 15 years before they decided to switch to Telstra around 18 months ago.

They opted to keep the same phone number, which was important for Mr Pye's work as a bricklayer contractor.

But they were unaware their number had been duplicated until about eight weeks ago, when they began receiving calls for someone named David.

"And my daughter kept ringing me on the home number, but the call was going through to a young family with children," Ms Pye said.

"Eventually I called our home number myself from a mobile, and got on to a man named David. I asked him what his phone number was -- and he gave me our number."

The other family -- who lived in Frankston North -- were with Optus, she said. Ms Pye said she contacted Telstra and Optus, but both companies initially refused to believe that two addresses would have been allocated the same number.

"What got up my nose is that there has been no apology or anything. This has been going on for two months and we have no idea how much business my husband has lost because of this," Ms Pye said.

A spokeswoman for Optus said yesterday the number had been incorrectly allocated to a new customer after Mr and Ms Pye moved their business to Telstra. "Optus apologises for any inconvenience," she said.

A Telstra spokesman said problems with the Pyes' phone line had been resolved.


Source

Optus gets nasty on Christmas eve

ANGRY customers have accused Optus of greedy behaviour after it cut off their access to cheap international mobile telephone calls on Christmas Eve.

The company texted customers this week telling them they would no longer pay local mobile-to-mobile rates for services that use the internet to make overseas phone calls.

The move forced at least two businesses offering the service to pull it from Optus customers on Christmas Eve, just as many were preparing to call family and friends overseas.

"I spend two hours a day calling India and the US," an Indian student studying in Sydney, who did not want to be named, said.

"It affects me because I have to pay $100 per month as according to my [phone] contract but now I have to spend more on using a calling card."

Consumers have flocked to companies offering the cheap service, which uses voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology to redirect national mobile calls overseas at no extra cost to the telco or customer, according to one provider.

The system allows customers on plans offering, for example, "10c for 10 minutes" or unlimited voice calls to networks within Australia, to call mobile numbers overseas but not pay any more than the price of a regular mobile call.

Telstra, Vodafone and Three all allow their customers to use the services but Optus texted its pre-paid mobile users to warn them they would be charged at international rates of 29c a minute.

Nizi Bahandari, from Freedom Calls, one of the businesses offering the service, said Optus was effectively overcharging customers for calls that did not cost the company anything extra. "We're not using the Optus network," Mr Bahandari said. "They just want customers to pay the premium international rates."

An Optus spokeswoman said she could not comment on whether the service was costing Optus more than the cost of a national mobile-to-mobile call.

But she said the pricing change was in line with the terms and conditions of its timeless and cap plans, which exclude international calls.

But Mr Bahandari said Optus should not be applying international call rates to telephone calls made over the internet and on another network.

"The number [that customers call] is on a Vodafone network and Vodafone gets paid [a termination fee] by the other networks," he said.

The decision has cut Freedom Calls traffic by 50 per cent because most customers had signed up to Optus plans in the belief they could use the mobile-to-VoIP services.

"We used to connect 15,000 to 20,000 minutes of international calls per day … now it's only 6000 or 7000 [minutes]," Mr Bahandari said. "[Optus is] trying to conquer the market by getting a really good plan and a good offer and suddenly they're changing the offer by saying it's not to their benefit because customers are using it for VoIP calling. It's the wrong thing to do."

Source

Account checking service disconnected without warning

Holders of Optus prepaid mobile accounts used to be able to ring 5555 and get an immediate readout of how much money was left in their account. Telstra has a similar service on 1258888.

Sometime in the last week or so the Optus service has simply vanished -- with no redirect.

So I had to go online and spend half an hour setting up the service there. I now need a username and password to retrieve info that I once got simply by dialling 4 numbers.

Optus really have utter contempt for their customers.

Update:

How about that! The new number is 555. I used the old number lots so I know what it was. I have it written down in front of me.

But it took a commenter here to advise me of the change.

More woeful service from Optus

And, as usual, Optus doesn't care

The Optus 3G mobile network is on its knees with customers reporting performance problems and an unusable service in North Sydney, but Optus refuses even to acknowledge the problem.

The carrier's heavy promotion of aggressively priced wireless broadband and iPhone 3G plans has resulted in the network being overloaded with users, leading to widespread network performance problems and frequent outages.

The worst of the complaints have come from North Sydney, where users have been forced to drop down to the inferior 2G network just so they can receive calls.

So far regulators have done little to compel Optus to improve its 3G network performance and customers have been left in the lurch because they face significant fees should they terminate their contracts early.

In the US, Apple and its carrier partner AT&T are being sued by a customer for allegedly deliberately overselling the iPhone 3G, resulting in network overload and speeds far below those promised by the companies.

A global survey of iPhone 3G users by Wired magazine found Optus offered the slowest network speeds of any iPhone carrier worldwide.

Users of the Australian broadband community site Whirlpool have flooded the message board with tales of woe.

They report being unable to send or receive phone calls and texts or to browse the internet when on Optus 3G. Their only option is to drop down to the slower 2G network.

Compounding matters is poor Optus support, with customers reporting being bounced around incessantly between departments and huge waiting times.

For many, the only viable solution has been to switch providers.

Tom Piotrowski, managing director of North Sydney IT security company Unixpac, bought an iPhone 3G the day it came out and has been experiencing issues ever since.

His office is situated 300 metres from an Optus mobile tower yet he is unable to get any 3G reception at all.

"Our modern 3G phones need to be switched to 2G while in North Sydney, otherwise chances for getting calls through or being able to call out are very slim," he said.

Using an iPhone speed test application Piotrowski recorded a transfer rate of 20Kbps in North Sydney compared with 390Kbps at his home in Collaroy.

Mark Novosel, telecommunications analyst at IDC, which is also based in North Sydney, said three of his colleagues who were Optus 3G customers experienced severe service problems.

Two of them downgrade their phones to 2G while in the office so they can reliably make calls, he said. One was able to convince Optus to waive its early termination fees so they could switch carriers.

Despite Optus's coverage maps indicating there are no problems in North Sydney, Novosel said Optus customer support staff had admitted there was a "black spot" in the area.

A spokesman for the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman said the regulator would look into Optus customer complaints only if customers had obtained a coverage map from the carrier when buying the service and could prove the coverage did not match up to Optus's promises. [The TIO is pretty useless in my experience too]

Optus spokeswoman Tracy Monkman said there was no 3G black spot in North Sydney and many factors could affect speeds "including traffic, your equipment, location, software and the source of your download".

In an apparent admission that its 3G network was overloaded, last week Optus quietly ditched the 3G wireless version of its Fusion bundle, which includes broadband and telephone services.

The plan, heavily promoted by Optus, had only on the market only since August. Optus said it was axed "to ensure that we deliver an optimal service to our customers".

In addition to the surge in wireless broadband subscribers, the Optus 3G network has also been strained by an influx of iPhone users. Optus was able to secure a large chunk of iPhone early adopters when the device was launched in Australia in July because it offered the best value pricing packages.

A study by mobile communications company Amethon found iPhone customers were more demanding on the carriers' networks than users of other phones because they were performing far more network-intensive tasks such as web browsing.

"We're seeing iPhone users browse more pages than the average mobile user - almost twice as many pages," Amethon CEO Michael Stone said.

"The average browsing session of an iPhone user is [about] two megabytes, versus [about] 300 kilobytes of an average mobile user."

The Optus 3G network has had four outages in various parts of the country since July. The carrier announced in May it was rolling out expanded 3G network coverage and would eventually reach 98 per cent of the population

Source

Optus: Customers not important

SOCCEROOS supporters who rose early to watch the boys in green and gold play a crucial World Cup qualifying match on Thursday morning received a rude awakening when they discovered that their Optus cable and pay-TV services were not working.

A planned outage in Optus's Belrose exchange near Sydney's northern beaches knocked offline the telco's cable services including telephone, internet and pay-TV for eight hours from 11pm on September 10.

But while Optus said only a few hundred customers were affected by the outage, customers as far away as 30km reported they were without services too.

One Optus subscriber from Pennant Hills who contacted The Australian expressed their frustration that the telco failed to warn any of its subscribers about the impending outage.

"What if someone had a medical emergency and couldn't ring 000?" asked the subscriber. "In fact, I nearly had a heart attack when I was trying to figure out how to watch the Socceroos' match!"

According to an Optus spokesperson, the planned outage wasn’t important enough to warrant telling customers about it.

"This maintenance involved less than a few hundred customers and was timed to have minimal impact to them. We deemed it unnecessary to contact customers in this instance," the Optus spokesperson said.


Source

Letter to Prepaid mobile accounts, Optus

Re: 0423 248 xxx

Dear Sirs/Mesdames,

What the hell is going on?

I received this morning a message on the above phone saying that my SIM card needed recharging. Yet I have used it hardly at all since the last recharge and it has remained in my possession at all times.

Then I rang the usual number to check on my account (5555) and was simply told that the number had been disconnected. No alternative number was provided. Is it chaos manor there?

If the card is indeed in need of recharge it may be connected with the recent Queensland service outage. Excessive billing at that time by you has been widely publicized. Failing that, someone else has hacked into my account. Please clarify this matter and provide me with a record of all alleged calls.

Unless the matter is resolved to my satisfaction I will have to conclude that I can no longer afford your dubious service. I will of course be posting this letter and your reply on my Optus blog:

http://optus-australia.blogspot.com/

Yours faithfully,


Dr John Ray

The problems keep on coming

FLAWED software patches from Nokia Siemens Networks have crippled Optus's 3G mobile network in Brisbane, the telco said.

Since 6am yesterday, Optus subscribers in Brisbane suffered from intermittent transmission of data and voice services as Australia’s number two telco battled to reconfigure a recent upgrade to its new 3G software platform.

The upgrade, which has been applied to all Optus 3G mobile switches nationwide, was supposed to provide efficiency gains in speed and capacity load. Instead, it triggered three separate network failures which combined to cause chaos for Optus customers in Queensland, NSW, the ACT and Victoria last week.

As a result subscribers were left without mobile phone services for about 10 hours.

While the upgrade was successfully rolled back in Melbourne and Sydney, the problem again reared its ugly head in Brisbane.

"We had a new patch put in place in the affected areas by midday last Friday but we now have a re-emergence of a similar problem in the Brisbane area," Optus spokesperson Maha Krishnapillai said.

The network in Brisbane was online at 7am but went offline an hour later. At 4pm systems went down again.

"We're not sure how long it will take to fix this problem again but we hope soon," Mr Krishnapillai said.

He said Optus could offer no guarantees that the problem would not recur as it was related to a Nokia Siemens software fault.

"Nokia's latest version of the software was in effect 'contaminated'. We had a bug in the software so we have had to roll it back.

"The issue for us is that we have put the upgrade in other areas and have had no problems whatsoever - so it’s a bit of a lottery."

Engineers from Optus and Nokia Siemens were both responsible for the patch installation.

He said Optus was unsure why the patch had worked in some areas but not others.

"There was extensive testing on both our parts and we were also assured by Nokia Siemens that the software would work in different (network) environments," he said. "But when we went live it was a different story."

"Now we’re just hoping the patch will hold. We can’t say for sure whether or not we will have more issues over the next week in Brisbane," he said.

Nokia Siemens declined to directly address Mr Krishnapillai's claims, saying it valued its close relationship with Optus.

"We're proud of both companies' shared goal of providing a superior mobile service in Australia. Experts from both companies are working in partnership to resolve any remaining network issues, as is always the case when any outage occurs," Nokia Siemens spokesman Ben Roome said.

In the meantime Optus has requested network engineers from Nokia Siemens' Finland headquarters to rectify the problem on-site.

"We have told Nokia to fly out some engineers because we certainly won't be flying them here," Mr Krishnapillai said.

Mr Krishnapillai suggested Optus would be reviewing the service level guarantees it had in place with Nokia Siemens.

"We do have some service level guarantees with them and we will clearly be looking at whether in fact the software they have given us is up to scratch," he said.

Mr Krishnapillai ruled out Optus pursuing legal action against Nokia Siemens or seeking compensation.

"We are not looking to sue them on this, what we are doing is looking to work with them to fix it.

“As I’m sure Nokia would tell you, we are their most important customer in Australia and a very important customer throughout the SingTel group ... they will clearly want to make sure they work with us to fix this problem," he said.

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24141034-15306,00.html