Optus compensated customers $1.2m for “misplaced revenue” from 2023 outage – Telco/ISP
Optus clients managed to extract $1.2 million in money and repair credit from the telco to compensate for misplaced revenue from its 12-hour outage on November 8 final 12 months.
The figures [pdf] have been revealed as a part of a senate inquiry into the outage, albeit a month after the committee already handed down its report.
Compensation for the unplanned outage was a serious buyer criticism, principally provided within the form of extra data quota.
Within the inquiry report, ex-Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin stated most clients could be entitled solely to “between $1 and $2” in monetary compensation in any other case.
She then advised the inquiry in mid-November final 12 months that 8500 clients had made claims for $430,000, of which Optus had paid out $36,000.
The brand new set of figures reveals {that a} subset of those claimants – 1154 – finally succeeded in being compensated by the telco particularly for “misplaced revenue”.
They collectively acquired $481,038 in money and $761,843 in service credit, for a complete of $1.24 million.
A lot of the profitable claimants – 90 % – have been client customers. The compensation averaged $474 per consumer in money and repair credit, though money was proportionately a small element.
Some 15 enterprise clients additionally managed to safe nearly $282,000 in service credit.
A lot of the money compensation went to 75 client or small-to-medium enterprise (SMB) clients.
A separate response from the Telecommunications Trade Ombudsman (TIO) – which fielded buyer complaints associated to the outage – signifies it had a hand in serving to clients entry about $53,000 “in complete credit provides, compensation paid, or money owed adjusted”.
Nevertheless, the TIO said [pdf] it “didn’t study the result” for almost all of the complaints it triaged.