Australian telco giant Optus slapped with $85 million fine over ‘appalling’ sales conduct
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
A federal court ruled that Optus should be punished for selling products to vulnerable customers that they did not need nor want, leaving many in debt.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
SYDNEY - Embattled Australian telco giant Optus was hit with a US$66 million (S$85 million) fine on Sept 24 over “appalling” sales conduct as the firm grapples with fallout from a network outage linked to a number of deaths
A federal court ruled that the company – one of Australia’s top telecommunications providers – should be punished for selling products to vulnerable customers between 2019 and 2023 that they did not need nor want, leaving many in debt.
Many of these people were also indigenous and lived in remote parts of the country.
The Federal Court’s Justice Patrick O’Sullivan labelled the company’s conduct as “extremely serious” and “appalling”.
Consumers incurred thousands of dollars of debt while on modest incomes and became embarrassed or stressed over how they would make repayment, he added.
The court formally approved the penalty on Sept 24, which Optus and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had agreed to in June.
Optus previously described its sales practices during the offending period as “unconscionable conduct and inappropriate”.
Following the ruling, the company said it had changed its sales practices to better support customers. “Optus is remediating impacted customers as a matter of priority,” it said.
It will also donate US$662,300 to improve the financial literacy of indigenous communities.
The Sept 24 fine comes just days after an outage impacted 600 people across South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory for around 13 hours.
The outage prevented calls to emergency services, with the deaths of three people now linked to the outage.
On Sept 24, Optus announced details of an independent review that will probe the series of events that took place and determine why emergency calls did not connect.
Chief executive Stephen Rue expressed his dismay for the “very sad loss” of the lives of the three people “who could not reach emergency services in their time of need”.
Optus was previously fined A$12 million (S$10.2 million) after an outage halted its mobile and internet systems for nearly 12 hours in 2023. AFP
