Telstra’s latest outages are harming local businesses: “It’s not just inconvenient because you can’t watch Netflix”

Business owners have once again been plagued by Telstra connectivity issues in recent days, just two months after chief executive Andrew Penn issued a grovelling apology to customers.

On Friday, Telstra announced customers using NBN and ADSL services were experiencing difficulty accessing the internet.

By 8pm that night the telco claimed all services were restored, but backtracked the next morning by saying a “small number of customers” were still experiencing issues.

— Kate Morris (@morris_kate) May 20, 2016

Have had to send half my staff home as nobody can get any work done without the internet. @Telstra you’re killing me.

— Kate Morris (@morris_kate) May 20, 2016

Kate Morris, founder of online retailer Adore Beauty, was one of the business owners to be affected by Telstra’s latest outages. 

Morris told SmartCompany no one in her office could get any work done on Friday. 

“It was horrendous,” Morris says. 

“I literally had to send anybody who had a laptop and could work from home with an internet connection home, because we couldn’t get anything done here. We had to go down and buy a 4G dongle to plug into the router, but in the end we couldn’t get that to work.” 

For his part, Telstra chief executive Andrew Penn has said he is listening to aggrieved customers. 

“To customers still experiencing difficulties with your broadband service, pls know I’m reading all your comments and our team is on it,” Penn tweeted yesterday.  

To customers still experiencing difficulties with your broadband service, pls know I’m reading all your comments and our team is on it

— Andrew Penn (@andy_penn) May 24, 2016

However, Morris says internet outages have a massive impact on a business’s bottom line.

“You lose actual money, it’s not just inconvenient because you can’t watch Netflix,” she says.

“I have 12 staff in the office on Fridays, so that’s a day’s wages times twelve. Luckily our warehouse was online but if we hadn’t been able to get orders out the door, that would have been a huge problem.”

“The cloud’s great until you have no internet. It’s embarrassing if you’re running an internet company.”

SmartCompany contacted Telstra to ask if affected customers will receive compensation, in a similar manner to how the company responded to the widespread outages in March.

In response, a Telstra spokesperson said a number of small business customers were contacted yesterday by SMS to help resolving any lingering connectivity issues.

“We are also working directly with our business customers who have been impacted through our Telstra Business Centres and relevant business field service teams,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“Certainly if there are any customers who are still experiencing issues, we ask them to contact us so we can resolve their issues as soon as possible.”