Giving Optus the boot – customers flock to rival telcos as Optus fails them

Last year when Optus led the way with the biggest data breach we’d seen in Australia, customers were angry, upset, but there wasn’t a material switch in their habits. While Optus certainly lost customers there was no Mass Exodus. Turns out, a full day network outage is that drives people to change.

EFTM can reveal that several rival telcos are reporting a boom in new signups yesterday and continuing today as customers look for a new mobile or data plan.

A spokesperson for Vodafone tells us “Our Vodafone stores and online channels have been buzzing with customers in search of great value, deals, and reliable service. Over the last 24 hours we’ve seen more than a four-fold increase in activity across all our brands including Vodafone, TPG iiNet, felix and Lebara, making it our busiest sales day in the last year – and it’s not slowing down.”

“Our store and online support teams are ready to help customers connect and have been providing temporary numbers in instances where slight delays have occurred when porting numbers from other carriers.”

We can take from that, the usual 5-60 minute porting time – the process of moving your number from one telco to another – may have slowed due to the almost unprecedented demand for network switching in the last day.

And every network has a sales pitch of course – Vodafone wanting Optus customers to know that “With our network satisfaction guarantee, market-leading international and in-flight roaming, and our award-winning mobile plans, Vodafone is always committed to keeping our customers connected to the great value and reliable service they need.”

Telstra were not able to provide daily statistics to EFTM, but given the dramatic queues that have been reported at Telstra stores and partner retailers like JB HIFI, we can safely assume that Telstra’s got themselves some new business today.

While on the Telstra Network, Boost Mobile were not shy in holding out open arms to disgruntled Optus customers, Jason Haynes, General Manager of Boost Mobile told EFTM “We welcome all new Boost customers, and promise them the biggest network, most reliable network, and a team that will always work hard for their business, never taking it for granted”

EFTM understands Boost saw a five fold increase in daily sales yesterday, and double their website traffic.

Keeping it cheeky, Kogan Mobile launched a 60% discount deal for new customers and it’s worked. Kogan tells us they saw a 400% increase in eSIM sales yesterday, showing that people are looking for that instant satisfaction of a new network.

An eSIM allows you to get a new network online, with a QR code being all you need to activate on the network.

While this is all fascinating, and in part expected, it shouldn’t take our focus off the fact that Optus has yet to share with us any information about the cause of yesterday’s outage. Unacceptable.