Optus is well known for crashing communications in Australia, with the Singapore owned Company now facing millions in payouts and fines for damages to businesses, following their last big outage, but the bigger problem is that current management appear to have failed to learn from their past mistakes and are back doing what they do well “screwing small business” due to system failures.

Now it’s the Companies internal systems that are under the spotlight with the business struggling to manage accounts and simple business NBN orders.

This is a business that according to the latest 2024 Roy Morgan Brand research is the “Most distrusted Brand In Australia” whose answer to problems is to cut people off from their network despite Optus being in the wrong.

Recently Optus appointed former NBN CEO Stephen Rue as its new chief executive after the company dumped their former CEO, along with a multitude of senior management following their disastrous network crash that cost Australian businesses millions of dollars.

One of the problems appears to be that Optus is still employing inept senior management in Australia, who appear to not know how bad their communication processes are when it comes to NBN for business customers.

On one occasion three modems were sent to a building site in Mosman when one replacement modem was supposed to be sent to the Companies office address in North Sydney, where the service was located and where the first faulty modem was sent to.

Call centres overseas, support staff who struggle to understand English, with accounts set up in the name of an individual, instead of a business appear to be par for course at Optus.

Back in November 4Square Media ordered a simple NBN service for our new office. We booked the fasted service available, what we got was a service that kept crashing resulting in the modem having to be replaced and that is when the Optus backend was totally exposed for its failures.

Also exposed was the stupidity of their support staff who struggled to actually understand that Optus actually sells a home NBN service as well as a business NBN service.

In the case of 4Square Media the account was apparently set up using my home address, despite no one from this office giving them that address due to it currently being a building site, and the fact that we don’t give out personal addresses for a business account.

After 90 minutes on the phone back in early December we were told the issue had been fixed, “The Account is now in the name of the Company”.

“We were assured that the direct debits from the 4SQM account would continue.

We were also told that the CEO of the business would be listed on the account in the event of any forward issues.

Then suddenly we get an email claiming that the service had been cut off over the Xmas period, because “You have not paid a $109 monthly fee”, this is despite three past direct debits from our business account to date for the service.

But it gets better, a visit to my Optus Account online, reveals that there is not just one account there is two and neither are in the name of the business or myself.

Instead, the accounts are in the name of our financial controller who initially contacted Optus to establish the account.

Ironically both accounts show that no money is owing untill mid January 2025.

A call to the Optus support centre, which I suspect is based overseas was in itself a nightmare that no one should have to go through.

After sending me a security number on my mobile which was listed on the account along with my date of birth, the operator then demanded a copy of my passport or driving licence, when my passport number was supplied, he claimed it did not match my mobile number which was the same number he had just sent me a security number on.

His solution to fixing the problem was to refuse, to action any payment or resolve the issue as I was not listed on the account and my passport did not match tyhe phone number he had for the account.

He then objected to the use of “Profanity” by me.

As one observer said, “Dealing with Optus support is like sliding down a razor blade on your private parts”.
“It’s painfully” to say the least.

Hugh Fletcher, Marketing Director at Optus has not commented for this story.

He has also not commented either on what he is doing to change the perception as outlined by Roy Morgan Research that Optus is a Company a lot of people are now saying “No” to, resulting in the tag that the Singapore owned Optus is Australia’s most “Distrusted brand in Australia”.