Optus fined $66 million for ‘appalling’ conduct in sales to telecom’s customers in Australia
Melbourne, Australia – An Australian judge sentenced the telecommunications giant Optus Optus 100 million Australian dollars ($ 66 million) to a fine of hundreds of vulnerable customers on Wednesday, especially in indigenous communities outside the range of its coverage.
The Singapore subsidiary, the ownership of the government, is confronted separately with fines of several million dollars about its failure last week to connect hundreds of emergency calls due to a breakdown of four deaths.
The judge of the Federal Court, Patrick O’Sullivan, approved an agreement on advocacy between optus, the second largest telecommunications in Australia, and the Australian Competition and Consumers Commission for inadmissible driving and inappropriate sales practices extending over four years until July 2023.
He said that optus driving was “extremely serious and can only be described as appalling”.
“The high management of the optus knew, or should have known, failures of the system which allowed unreasonable conduct which can be described rightly as a predator,” O’Sullivan told court.
“The fact that the conduct of optus has a particular concern is mainly affected vulnerable consumers, including people with mental disabilities, people with financial difficulties, people with low financial literacy and people with English skills and limited learning difficulties,” he added.
Many victims were vulnerable indigenous peoples of regional and distant communities, some of which lived outside the range of mobile optus coverage.
Optus sales personnel have exerted excessive pressure to customers, made customers’ details to guarantee higher credit approvals for contracts, and then hired debt collectors to recover what was due.
Following the decision, Optus said in a statement that he “recalled clients affected as a priority”. The declaration has not detailed this correction.
Optus would also pay $ 1 million in ($ 660,000) to support digital literacy initiatives for Aboriginal Australians.
When Optus admitted corporate offenses in June, CEO Stephen Rue described them as “inexcusable and unacceptable”.
The judge’s criticisms occurred a few hours after Optus appointed an expert to examine the breakdown on September 18, which had an impact on 631 customers who tried to call the emergency services. Four of these emergencies were fatal.
Australian treasurer Jim Chalmers said that a government investigation to investigate the question of whether the parent company Singtel provided Optus with sufficient money to make emergency calls reliable.
Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon said that the parent company had invested $ 9.3 billion in ($ 6.2 billion) in Optus in the past five years to build network infrastructure across Australia.
Singtel “will continue to invest if necessary to provide reliable communication services to all Australians,” Moon said in a statement.
Rue said that optus investigators have already established that the last breakdown was caused by a “human error”.
“These are not expenses, it is a process. Standard processes have not been followed. It is not an investment problem. It is people who do not follow the processes,” said journalists.
