An Optus customer has revealed the sneaky reason they were unable to claim extra data provided as compensation for the massive outage last week.
Aussie man Twaj shared a video where he showed the 100GB of free data he was eligible to claim following Optus’ nationwide blackout last Wednesday.
Some 10million Aussies were caught up in the outage with the telecommunication giant offering up to 200GB of free data to its customers.
‘Something interesting I noticed when I was going to claim my compensation for the Optus outage,’ Twaj said in a TikTok video on Monday.
‘As you can see, 100GB of bonus data – it will not let me add it to my cart. There’s a little message up here, “Update your payment method”.
One Optus customer (above) said he wasn’t able to claim his compensation data bonus unless he switched to direct debit billing
Twaj revealed he then ran into a problem shortly afterwards while trying to complete the transaction.
‘They’re trying to make me update my payment method to direct debit in order to claim,’ he said.
‘I currently pay via invoice, which isn’t really something they offer to customers anymore, and now they’re making me sign up to direct debit to claim compensation.
‘Optus, do better.’
The nationwide outage sparked outrage from Australians who demanded CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin step down.
Harvey Norman owner Gerry Harvey swooped in to defend the boss claiming it was ‘unfair’ to call for her resignation.
‘We live in a computer world and we know these problems occur from time-to-time,’ he told Perth radio station 6PR on Monday.
‘It could happen to any public company, the CEO doesn’t run the IT department – you employ people that run that and somewhere, something goes wrong.
‘It might be that person’s fault in the IT department but it might not be, it might be a hack, it might just be bad luck.
‘Then they [customers] call for the sacking of the chairman, the sacking of the CEO – this is ridiculous!’
Mr Harvey pointed out that all companies can suffer technical difficulties and called for Optus customers to stop attacking CEO Ms Bayer.
‘This could happen to anyone, it could happen to Harvey Norman tomorrow – then they’d call for me to be sacked,’ he said.
Harvey Norman owner Gerry Harvey (pictured with wife Katie Page-Harvey) called the backlash to Optus’ blackout ‘ridiculous’
‘Why did everyone suddenly want to attack somebody, tell the CEO they’ve got to go?
‘This is ridiculous and the politicians piled onto it, the media piled onto it and it became a frenzy to get rid of them.
‘This could happen to anyone and we start going on like this, it’s just way beyond stupid.’
More than 10million Australians and 400,000 businesses were impacted by Optus’ service blackout last week.
For up to 12 hours, many were left without internet and phone services – crippling workers and businesses alike.
Customers have been offered up to 200GB of extra data for their ‘patience and loyalty’.
However, Mr Harvey agued customers shouldn’t be expecting compensation from an ‘accident’.
‘Everybody’s going, “Oh, you’ve got to compensate me!” but 20, 40 years ago, we didn’t go on like this,’ he said.
‘I just think it’s amazing how many people want to take money off somebody.
‘If someone does the wrong thing, it’s a different thing altogether but when it’s an accident – it’s just over the top stuff.
‘Things happen and you can’t expect compensation every time an accident occurs.’
Mr Harvey added his company was affected by the outage too, but kept the inconvenience in perspective.
Mr Harvey shared his support for Optus CEO Kelly Rosmarin and called for Optus customers to have more perspective, saying the outage ‘lasted 10 hours, it didn’t last 10 days’
‘We were inconvenienced badly too. We’ve got all our deliveries going out across Australia and we’re tied to Optus, so you can’t let people know when it’s going to be delivered – sure, it’s a problem,’ he said.
‘But it lasted 10 hours, it didn’t last 10 days.
‘The world’s full of big problems, this is a little problem in comparison.’
Optus revealed on Monday the blackout was caused by an error during a ‘routine software upgrade’ that automatically disconnected its routers.
‘Given the widespread impact of the outage, investigations into the issue took longer than we would have liked as we examined several different paths to restoration,’ the telco said in a statement.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Optus for comment.