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.