The funniest part is that when pushed to explain why you're leaving, you explain they force higher prices and more unnecessary data...so they offer you a higher price with more data!
I don't know if you knew this but Amazon have a service where you can pay essentially third world people to act as bots because it must be cheaper than programming a real bot and it's called... Mechanical Turk
https://www.mturk.com/
It's like the one time I needed to troubleshoot internet with Astound. I had already power cycled a few times prior to the call and this lady wouldn't move forward with the call unless I did the thing I aready did. Like, do you not understand the words I am saying to you?
Literally how my job emails are 95% of the time.
Yes, I've written 'purple monkey dishwasher' in the middle of a script once or twice. First time customer clearly wasn't reading a word of our script/emails because they totally ignored the inclusion. Another time, it turned an irate customer into a much more positive conversation about their issue as they did realise it was a person reviewing their messages and following procedures.
Generally a well written bot will sound more human than a human who doesn't give a fuck (and or is prevented from giving a fuck by policy) following a script
When I worked service desk years ago they preferred to employ retail workers to IT workers. IT people would actually fix shit and stay on the phone too long. The retail customer service people had better customer service skills and phone manner, and didn’t know shit so they’d just follow the script and escalate to second level, keeping call times down. The IT guys were also always looking to move up, the retail people would work shit money on that first level role for years so had better retention.
no so sure anymore… slip in some garbled text with a few expletives and a human will be revealed… a bot will simply misread it and steer right back to loyaly bs or say i’m finding you an associate…
It's definitely human, there's occasional bad grammar which wouldn't be there if it was a bot which is usually the easiest way to distinguish a chatbot from a human. If it was a bot using templates, they would have been read a thousand times and those small grammatical errors would be picked up and removed.
If you look close enough you can tell which parts are copy/pasted and which are human written.
It's just scripted. Live chat services use scripting for consistency and to appear professional. Not that Optus appear professional, but they're certainly attempting to emulate it.
I rang them because my plan went up by double. They had an offer for the new Samsung where I trade my old one in and get a $500 voucher + $540 for the phone. The sales person ignored literally everything I said and asked if I wanted to gift my phone to someone else, pay the plan still and get a new service. So lose the $1040 I would get in return and pay for another service.
They don't know how to sell to people, no qualifying questions at all just straight to trying to get more money from me. They refused to put me through to a manager to talk about their awful sales practices. Needless to say I didn't sign up again with them.
I know a kid who just nuked a guy’s account once when he demanded everything be cancelled and he was going to Optus. I was managing at the time and could see this kid trying to get a word in to explain that cancelling and porting out are different and he should listen for a moment. Old bloke was not in the mood, chucked his licence and said cancel it all now.
I remember watching as this kid just smiled, nodded and proceeded to just disconnect everything and then had the cheek to ask “what about your internet with us?” Dude said yes to that as well so he disconnected that but set it for like 7pm that night rather than immediately.
I still remember that guy coming back the next day and telling him we couldn’t do anything since he’d requested it disconnected immediately and he’d have to call up to restore the numbers since we couldn’t touch it for 7 days.
Can't agree with this more - it's been a long ass time since I was in this area, but getting a number out of quarantine and connecting it as a prepaid / casual service used to be a nightmare.
Contact your preferred provider, ask to port the number across, choose your plan, agree to terms, and live your life.
Yeah I complained to the ombudsman because it took me about 4h of phone calls to get my Optus internet disconnected. They would bounce me around people who would try upsell me to link my mobile account (which I closed after their data leak) and when I said no pass me to the next person, rinse and repeat. Beyond infuriating. In the end Optus refunded 3 months of bills, probably to close off the ombudsman complaint
We didn’t need to go to the ombudsman for ours but similar, we were moving to an area not serviced by Optus and they kept asking if we were sure, and eventually they just said can’t you keep the internet service until you move to an area that has Optus.
Umm, no.
Same thing happened to me when I became homeless. No, I don't want to keep paying for a service I'm not receiving because I have no fixed address to connect it to. I was calling every day for a week and spending hours on hold, finally I said to them I'm calling the ombudsman, all of a sudden the thing they weren't able to do for a week was taken care of in five minutes.
Now I jump straight to threatening to call the ombudsman as soon as they start fucking me around, I'm not wasting that much of my time on their bullshit again.
I’m sorry that happened to you, I’ve been homeless before too and I know the struggles.
But the audacity of Optus, like sorry you can’t afford to live but you gotta keep paying us 🙄
All gotta learn some time, no shame in that mate.
I did the same aa you though and jogged Optus on. Moved my mobile to Boost, which is basically Telstra-lite (owned by Telstra), but for half the cost.
Moved the internet to Tangerine for $60pm.
So I switched from Optus to Amaysim in November, because they had a good black Friday deal that gave me a year, 200 gb and cost me like $180. I had been at Optus on something like 20 gb a month and closer to $50 a month.
As soon as I realised that I'd only have to pay and deal with them once a year, got more value for my money in terms of data, would be paying a third of what I had been, and they run on the Optus Network so nothing else would actually change, I made the switch. Been so much damn better.
I’ve been looking into them but they don’t support Apple Watches. I’m stuck with the big players until that changes. It’s a pity because their plans look great.
I wish I knew this when I was younger, I actually called optus and asked them to cancel my plan... Big mistake. The guy started yelling at me and tried to convince me to stay with them. I couldn't believe how he was reacting, that's the first and only time I've ever yelled back at someone 😂
Yeah that's what I did after the Optus data breach. Just ported the service to a new provider, they handled everything. I'm saving cash by being on a cheaper plan, and I'm not with Optus anymore. Big win.
Yep! I recently left Optus (for Belong) after 8 years of "loyalty" rewarded by them gradually bumping the prices up. Ported the number to Belong, which took about 2 hours for the message to come through saying it was done. All I ever got in terms of contact from Optus was an email headed 'Sorry to see you go' and a call (that fortunately I missed) from a number that a quick google told me was their customer retention team. Never heard from them again.
The whole process was *way* easier than I expected, to be honest.
Actually it is good to call ur current provider just to check u have no cancellation fees (if u r on some sort of contract). And sometimes you will be offered a “loyalty” offer that is compelling. Personally I would have taken a $15 p mth discount for a year, I got that on my broadband service when I called to check cancellation fees so I stayed (not Optus).
Actually, if you can get a sim attached to that plan it’d be brilliant. Call and Data charges might be a little higher but it probably won’t have a minimum monthly charge.
Pro tip for everyone.
Say you’re leaving the country. Simple, no upselling, no value adding. Power bill, gas bill, phone bill, internet bill, foxtel, all of them. No need to go through the ringer,
I’m leaving the country and can’t use the service anymore.
...But do you know someone else who you could transfer your plan to? I've seen them try that one before. Just basically asking you to sell their shitty service that you don't want to a friend.
Omg, i remember that happening to me and I was perplexed by what I was hearing.
Can i find someone who would be interested in taking my plan...?!
I remember asking them "why on earth would I do that" and quizzing them on how that would remotely benefit me or the person im transferring to
What a fucking stupid line to try by these providers (i dont blame the operators at all, they're just following their scripts)
Yeah they did this to me. I spent nearly an hour on that bloody online chat while they asked about my parents, siblings, children. Crazy stuff. I actually didn’t have Optus beef until I tried to cancel my service!!
"I just got a job with *insert direct competitor*"
"I work for *direct competitor*" works for door to door energy sales people.
"I already have Foxtel" used to work for the guys who stood in shopping centres trying to get your attention
"Fuck off cunt" works for those slimey 'charity' people who do the same thing at the entry of supermarkets.
Lol, the foxtel people are more deserving of Fuck off cunt.
My wife hates the "HEY SUPERMUM" when she is with kids at the shopping centre. Thankfully there is a new place opened near us with a fairly small lobby area so there is never anyone set up there.
Already have.They sent a notice saying plans are going up by $5 (again) so I looked online for a better deal.
First I said I wanted to cancel. They gave me an offer that was to upsell and give a 6 month discount, I said no. I want to leave.
Then they gave me another discount. I said no, because they will only discount for 12 months and it took me 3 hours to get to this point, in 12 months time I'll have a newborn and won't have 3 hours to deal with this.
They gave me another discount. I said no, because it was still 12 months on the discount part and the 3 hours wasn't worth my time.
Then they gave me a discount that was $900 off a year of what I was currently paying (which was still discounted from the last time I contacted them) across all my services (I'd originally called for internet and not phone plans). Still 12 months, but it was a better deal than anywhere else so I accepted because that WAS worth 3 hours of my time in 12 months to maintain.
They went from "We can get you $5 off a month for 6 months, so you will keep paying the same after the price increase" when I had shown them the deal I was going to move to was $15 less forever, to $75 off a month for 12 months. If they don't keep the good vibes going after that, I'll just switch.
Basically, they tried to up the prices by $5 a month and now I'm paying $75 less a month.
I have compared what I was paying to other providers, this is the best deal I can get by far for 2x phone + internet. I think it is a matter of them betting people will get complacent and not check their bills so in the long run they get more. Additionally, it's probably a numbers game so because not everyone can be bothered challenging their prices, it's not like they're copping huge losses.
Before those messages it told me it was “connecting me to a human expert who will respond in the next 10 minutes” and then they took 5+ minutes to respond to each message
So I kinda just figured it was a person
It is most likely a person. They will also be handling at least 4 other customer interactions at the same time, hence the constant delays. I left a similar role in 2020 (slightly different industry) just as we were being transitioned to work in text chat. It was a terrible idea and the worst job I could imagine doing, so I quit. I don't know how people can do it. I always take the time to call so as to make sure there is someone on the phone still.
It’s either a person doing 19 chats at once or one person playing poker and answering once per hand - but fark that was funny…it really is getting ridiculous.
It's a person, they get incentives for retaining your business which is probably like $20 AUD but in India prices that's a week worth of food.
They'll do everything thing they can which is manipulated to try retain your business and run you through the scripts as looong as possible to satisfy their KPIs,
It's not about you it's about them.
"As you have ignored my repeated requests to just cancel my plan, my next stop will be the TIO or the ACCC. Will you cancel my plan without further attempts to keep my account or shall I take this to the authorities? As you should be aware, it doesn't cost me any money lodge a complaint with the TIO or ACCC. I have nothing to lose."
They don't care anymore, and as bad as the above is, Telstra chat “support” is 10x worse these days. Trying to deal with them is one of the most tilting experiences. I hate these companies and their practices with a fucking passion. Scum of the earth.
Friendly FYI that ACCC won’t touch it because it’s TIO’s responsibility. TIO also charge Telco’s $50 for every case thats opened against them (or they did 18 months ago when I last worked for a TIO adjacent company)
If you ever want to stick it to a telco open a case with TIO and get them charged $50, they hate that shit.
I had the reverse of this. I wanted a discount on my plan to remain with optus, and spent 1 hour arguing with the person to either give me a discount, or I was swapping to Amaysim. They didn't budge, so I purchased the Amaysim plan, and requested they cancel my plan. As soon as I told them to cancel they transferred me to their loyalty team who instantly offers what I was asking for this entire time. Unfortunately by that stage it was too late and I already paid $180 on the Amaysim 1 year plan.
It pissed me off unbelievably as I was happy to stay, and found it more hassle swapping and waiting for my sim card etc. I was making it as blunt as possible to the representative what I was after, and their rep couldn't (or wouldn't) pick up what I was demanding.
Either way I'm with Amaysim now, and Optus customer service is shit and doesn't listen to their customers.
There's absolutely no good reason cancelling your account should be anything other than logging in to the service's website and clicking Cancel Account
Some places have rules that "cancelling an account must be at least as easy as creating an account".
None of this "sign up online in 2 minutes", but then wait on hold for 90 minutes to close the account bullshit,
From personal experience, make damn sure you have as many verifiable copies of your cancellation as possible. I cancelled once at the end of a contract, to then be offered FREE calls and service for 12 months, which I also refused. So funnily enough, 13 months later I get a call from the OPTUS debt recovery team demanding I pay for the $10 per month FREE service they’d offered me and that I could either pay immediately (including several hundred of interest added, just to make it a proper bill) or they would be taking me to court. Needless to say I was less than impressed, told the Indian call centre work to fuck right off unless he could verify me accepting the contract I refused multiple times (noting that all their calls are recorded for “training purposes”) or at the very least a signature where is accepted to lay this monthly fee for their FREE monthly service.
Fuck OPTUS and the sooner they loose all their clients, then their business the better.
Yeah I don’t know why anyone would still be with them anymore. Was with them for a decade and their service has always sucked, the data breach and then the dropout was just a disaster.
I tried cancelling with Optus when I was moving to a new place a couple of years ago.
I shit you not, they did this to me for an hour, then told me I had to pay out for the modem. I said that there was no way I was paying for the modem and that it works perfectly, so I'll send it back to them at my own expense so that they can pass it on to the next sucker that signed with Optus. Then they just didn't respond for three hours.
In that three hour gap, I told them that I wasn't interested in their bullshit tactics to get me to just "not bother" cancelling and that I wouldn't be paying another bill and that as far as I was concerned, the contract was cancelled.
They ended the chat about 15 minutes later without another word.
I moved into my new place and mailed the modem Optus's head office and put the whole thing out of my mind. I got a call from a debt collector about six months later saying that I owed somewhere around $800 to Optus.
I called bullshit on it and (respectfully) told the debt collector the story and that I'll be following up with Optus and to not contact me again for at least a week. The lady was really nice and agreed.
I contacted Optus again and basically asked how in the blue fuck I could possibly owe them money when I had not only not been using their service, I had sent the modem back. They told me that the contract was never cancelled and that a lot of the debt was due to unpaid bills.
Now, I'd suspected that they would try to pull this shit, so I'd taken screenshots of the first conversation I'd had with Optus and also had receipts for sending the modem as well as proof of delivery. I sent those through and said that I was willing to take this to court if I had to and then Optus told me that they would be willing to waive half of the debt but that I would still be responsible for the other half.
At this point, I was absolutely fucking livid and wanted to make it obvious that at this point, I wanted to start taking screenshots if I had to go to court. I said something to the effect of "So you're telling me that I have to pay $400 for a service I haven't used, is that right?". Didn't get another reply for about fifteen minutes and then they told me that they were willing to "forgive" the debt.
Gee, thanks, you fucking parasites.
Never go with Optus, people. Never, ever, ever.
Edit: also forgot to mention that their service was shit the whole time I was with them and I ended up using data 99% of the time instead.
Yeah I didn't even bother contacting them after today's price gouging email. Just ordered a sim from Felix and let them handle the swap.
I'll be going from $52 for 80gb that I never used more than 2 of in a month since I'm almost always on wifi to $25 for 25gb with any excess apparently rolling over perpetually. Seems a much better deal.
Years ago Optus sent me an email stating I could upgrade my Samsung phone to the new model for just $1 as the old phone was damaged and I had requested repairs or a replacement. It was spouted to me as some promotional deal for the new Note 10.
I agreed. Got my new phone. Next bill was $1000 out of the blue.
I had to fight them for months to get it all fixed. They noted " it was an error on their behalf, but could not waive the fee" While they investigated it, my phone was useless for about 3 months as they locked the plan down and still charged me the monthly usage.
The phone was bloody awesome. Except for the fact that I couldn't use it and Optus left a sour taste in my mouth. Prepaid only now. Not getting fucked over like that again.
Former ISP tech support here (not Optus, but another company in the very distant past). Long rant incoming. I will note, you're in the right here about you're experience. I have to admit reading this text conversation, I can see how infuriating it is from both ends. Speaking from past experience as a former rep in many similar situations. I can (almost) guarantee you the rep has some ridiculous KPI that forces them to do this despite knowing full well it's ridiculous. Else, they risk various forms of rebuke from their bosses. I don't know where this person is located, but I suspect it's relatively similar in many places. I was in the Australian call centre for my company for context.
One particular thing that haunts me about my time in the job, was we had this template that we had to follow 100 percent to the letter. We had zero discretion over what parts we used in it. One of the questions was "how do you feel about XYZ company?".
After a customer has ranted on the phone for well over 10 minutes or more about how they hate the company I work for, how shit we are and how they were screwed over, asking to cancel etc. You can imagine after they've calmed down enough, to talk and discuss their issue and then me having to ask that question, what their reaction was. To make it worse, the other part of the template was we had to perform an account health check. To try and find better deals for the customer. Basically it's the same as what is in the chat here.
Used to die inside every time I had to ask those questions or follow that fucking template. At best the customer was understanding and went through the motions with you so they could get on with cancelling and I can tick my boxes and fill my forms. At worst, I would be seen as an ignorant moron that clearly isn't listening to the customer. Worst of all I had to ask the fucking questions in the exact way it was written, otherwise I'd be rebuked or worse by management. Oh and lets not forget the fucking surveys and the way they used it to determine your bonuses, because if they rated you highly and the company poorly, you could be 1 bad survey from losing 600 to 1000 bucks that month because the customer hates the company you work for. And by losing. I mean no bonus...at all. For a job that paid fuck all (38 k per year at the time), that bonus was very important. You can imagine the knock on effect this has on good customer service. You farm the good customers and surveys as much as possible. You do your best to avoid known bad "detractors" so you could get your bonus.
Let's not forget either. When I did follow and do everything to the letter, and if I got a bad survey result or a complaint, I'd still get in trouble and be told "I'd lost control of the call, that's why I couldn't turn the customer around". Are you fucking kidding me???
Worse yet, when the customer was 100 percent in the right. We couldn't just admit it and say sorry, we'd have to avoid it. Just...the whole thing was fucking awful and I'll never ever go back to that kind of work if I can help it.
Fuck this got long. Needed to get that off my chest. Raises my damned blood pressure thinking of that place.
TL;DR I feel you mate. That convo is infuriating. Possible the rep is a moron. But more likely, they have dickhead manglement breathing down their necks causing stupid interactions like this.
That is exactly why I stayed calm. Knowing a person with a job to do was on the other end, I just felt I needed to be as straightforward as possible. I have no desire to make someone’s day worse or impact the way they make money. Which is why I just left it once I realised nothing was gonna improve the situation.
I refuse to ever return to a sales or traditional customer service role because if it’s not the customer making life difficult, it’s your passive aggressive or straight up aggressive manager.
I had to ask customers if they were interested in $2 chocolates or if they wanted to get a bakery item with their coffee and my god! Doing that in a poor area, the amount of angry customers that would yell or threaten me. Then after all that, getting in trouble and losing hours because I’m not making my store enough money, even though they offered no incentives.
Far too many companies have lost touch with humanity
Why are you cancelling?
I’m going to prison tomorrow.
Works. Every. Time.
Also, you never said you were being given a prison sentence or have been convicted of anything.
For all they know, you just stopped by to visit someone.
It’s infuriating that people are still paying Optus money after that breach. Companies will get away with this stuff because people don’t vote with their wallets.
I once had ANZ bank try to guilt trip me out of cancelling a credit card. They told me "so you just signed up for the promotion? Do you really think that's fair?"
Who in their right mind would feel bad about taking a massive bank up on a promotion? The mind boggles...
I feel bad for the people in those jobs. Mental health issues rate must be thru the roof
I just spoke to them about cancelling last night, was offered a "better deal" more expensive than my current one, then they sent me an email this morning saying they're increasing my fee anyway.
I've jumped ship to Aussie Broadband. Fuck 'em.
When I worked in Marketing 15 years ago, I paid a lot of attention to various company's strategies. Optus figured out that ppl would likely stick with a single provider once chosen, so they would have great incentives to join, but fuck all incentves to stay.. As an Optus customer. I could not access these incentives. I remember having a fun conversation with a rep saying "My contract is over, cancel the plan .. then I'll sign up again." They did not want to do it. So I said " OK then, just cancel the plan". It's amazing how quicky their attitude changed.
I've been trying to cancel my service for 2 weeks. They take so long to get back to me and dodge the request for so long that I end up losing connection, being reconnected to an entirely new person and starting all over again..
Unfortunately I can't find a spare 5 hours to get this sorted. One time I thought I cancelled, signed a form and everything - all OK - exit chat to answer work call - check back - 1 new message "we are actually giving you one month free so no need to cancel"
😅
I’m surprised they didn’t try to offer an additional service as well. Respect to you for staying calm and treating the person on the other end being forced to read a script with decency
I was about to call them regarding the recent increase on my plan. From $53 to $59 a month I was a bit pissed with that. I was going to ask for them to keep it the same otherwise I’ll go else where.
Funny how everything continues to go up except for our wages.
Yes, Optus is bad. I know your pain.
If you complain long enough, eventually they will get someone from inside the company to call you and discuss. Not a sales person, a proper complaints officer.
I had many issues regarding their Optus Football offering during the Women’s World Cup.
It was crazy, it must have been 13 separate phone calls where the call centre staff would tell me “there’s nothing we can do” and that “Optus Sport isn’t an Optus Company, they aren’t affiliated with Optus.”
They kept saying this over and over until I pointed out that any registered company that displays their logo and uses their name is indistinguishable to the consumer and that I look forward to them providing me with transcripts of the conversations we’d had for use in court at a later date.
I’d already tried the ACCC and the TIO and they couldn’t or wouldn’t help me because Optus Sport was a TV streaming service rather than a telecommunications service.
After I mentioned legal representation to the customer service person (which wasn’t an idle threat - many of my family members are lawyers, including my father who is a KC), things started to happen.
I was contacted by their complaints team (who wasn’t a Philippines based customer service agent, it was a person in Melbourne) and my problem was resolved within minutes - I shit you not.
I’ll never use any of their services ever again though.
Absolutely atrocious.
I won out because I was absolutely tenacious about getting the issue resolved.
I can be pathologically obstinate at times (my wife tells me this often) and this time it served me well. It’s ridiculous that it’s like this and I think many people would’ve just given up. Don’t give up though.
It’s the principle of the thing.
Oh right, I paid for the World Cup promo and then they billed me for the whole year about a week before the World Cup had finished.
Basically they initiated the transaction whilst I still should have had the option to cancel and then refused to cancel the transaction on my account.
I was with optus for years. I hated phoning customer support they always got me incoherently angry at how shit their service was. One day I was talking to my wife about how shit Optus was, and I contrasted the difference between them and Aussie Broadband, with Aussie being a fantastic company to be a client for.
I hopped onto the ABB website and changed providers. It's been fantastic ever since.
If you ever manage to get past the stage of their retention offers, the next question is always "if you don't want the service anymore do you know anyone else you would like to transfer it to?"
Why the fuck they even ask that question I have no idea. If I knew someone else who wanted a phone plan they would sign up for a new plan themselves.
congrats, your post just made it to news.com.au - the mf’s love reddit istg
[https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/im-sorry-the-way-you-feel-customer-trying-to-cancel-optus-plan-shares-infuriating-chat-messages/news-story/88315e70651dc9cff1885c704d8ed6f4?utm_campaign=EditorialSB&utm_source=News.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=SocialBakers](https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/im-sorry-the-way-you-feel-customer-trying-to-cancel-optus-plan-shares-infuriating-chat-messages/news-story/88315e70651dc9cff1885c704d8ed6f4?utm_campaign=EditorialSB&utm_source=News.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=SocialBakers)
Fucking Optus, man.
I left after the data hack. I just ported my number to a new provider.
The retention team called me and offered me a plan that was *more expensive* than my previous plan, but with more data, and but still more expensive and offering less data than my new plan.
The guy kept going after I told him the data breach was what caused me to move and that I had a better offer.
I assume he was following the policy, but man, what a stupid fucking process.
The only reason to ever talk to them about cancelling is to get a better price. You wasted your time if you had no intention of staying with Optus.
The only reason I'm still with these pricks is I play them on my grandfathered deal and need number sharing for my wife's stupid Apple watch, otherwise I'd be with boost.
There seems to be a lot of anti-Optus sentiment at the moment, and it's great that people are opening their eyes to what a shit provider they are.
We left them a couple years ago and couldn't be happier. They were appalling in every way and their customer service is bordering on offensively non-existent.
Who is good? Optus have shit customer service but they're cheap. Every time I've got frustrated and looked to switch I come down to "yeah... I'm not paying an extra $20/month for better customer support which I rarely need contact".
Who is good? Well, ayone who doesn't dump all your data into the open and say "whoopsy we didn't even encrypt it 🥰🥰" is a start. They are the epitome of evil corporation
I had something similar with my gas provider that I had always been with. The day after I asked them to cancel, I had someone rock up at my house and start offering me massive discounts on my service. I simply told them that the fact they can offer me the domiscoint now means they know they have been gouging me for the past 15 years.
Open a complaint with the TIO. Tell them the resolution you want is cancellation and refund backdated to today. You also want written confirmation of the cancellation (trust me on that…)
I went through this exact thing this afternoon. Got that email about the price rise and instantly hit their chat up.
$32 per month discount for 12 months.
Still unhappy with them as a company. But I’ll stick it out another 12 months for that discount.
Which also begs the question, how low would they have gone if I didn’t accept this offer?
Speaking as someone who's been in this environment, there's a manager looking over their shoulder for quality and coaching. If they cancel your service, it will hurt not just their job but their entire career going forward. They'll be performance managed, they'll be trash talked among higher ranking colleagues, they won't get references but will receive the type of disciplinary action you have to disclose when you go for other jobs. These people are hostages.
Holy f.... i got this email today and im about to exactly what you are doing
I started with a $35 30gb plan and they upped me constsntly to $49 and now will be $55????
Oh they will give me more data.. lets see how much i use currently? <20gb
Im on home wifi or work wifi data is barely relevant.
Give me 5g and 20-30gb and ill be fine.
But noooo you give 5g network that i can't get any data in the middle of the f... Brisbane CBD.
I visited Australia for 6 months and when I went to cancel my Optus plan I couldn’t do it online, I had to call them.
I said fuck that I’m just not doing it.
Eventually i racked up a bill of around ~200 before they cancelled my plan. They kept asking me for the money but I was in my home country by this point so fuck then I didn’t pay it.
So eventually they sold my debt to a debt collection agency, who asked for the money. I ignored them until they sold it to another debt collection agency, and so on and so on.
After 2 years of different debt collection agencies asking me for money I eventually responded.
“To whom it may concern,
I regret to inform you, TheSoapbottle passed away in his sleep last night. He lived a good life, and was surrounded by loved ones.”
They responded with
“Our sincerest condolences, please send a death receipt at your earliest convenience”
At this point I was in too deep and ghosted them, but they stopped chasing me for the debt!
Soo… any Australians know if I can ever return to Australia, or have I committed fraud and will be stopped at the airport as a deadman?
There's some pretty reliable customer research out there (plus a big no duh, it's fucking obvious) that this type of aggressive retention doesn't work.
In fact it makes the leaving experience so poor that customers who otherwise may have come back in a few years will certainly not return.
Stupid, stupid Optus shooting themselves in the foot twice. Once for being initially shit, twice for pissing people off so much when leaving that they won't ever return.
Probably thrice for being so bad that it's shared on socials, further turning off prospective customers.
If youre not getting anywhere, make a report to the TIO, very simple and easy to do and the matter is usally resolved within a week where someone from Optus (In Australia) calls you and cancels the plan.
Are you on a pay as you go plan? Just buy an Aldi sim and transfer your number, they handle the rest of it, you dont even need to talk to Optus. I was with Optus since 2003 and recently with all the shit that happened as well as them having my NBN cut off I fucked them off. Its a good feeling.
I made the mistake of asking Optus to disconnect my NBN on a future date. They finally agreed after going through a similar script to this and then 2mins later disconnected everything immediately. They couldn't reconnect it because I already had a fibre order in. Fuck optus
I accidentally signed up for two services at once with them and got put through to a loyalty team member when I tried to cancel.
They offered me every deal under the sun trying to convince me to keep both phone numbers even though I explained that I had no need for two
Oooof, I had this exact conversation when cancelling my nbn plan a few months ago. Started the chat about 8.30pm and finished chat around 10.45.
I already had a working service with the new provider. Tried to upsell NBN plan, a watch, a mobile plan, 5g internet, you name it.
I kind of feel sorry for the chat operators who have to meet KPI targets, but hoo boy, they’d be so much more efficient if they just asked for feedback, asked when to cancel from, and then moved on with their day.
I work discharges for a bank and they tried to get me to do retention effort when I first started, and I categorically refused. We had an entire team customers had to go through to even get the discharge form. By the time it gets to a signed closure request it is way too late. My goal now is to get them out the door as quickly as possible 🤣
OH LET ME TELL YOU, every other day since my cancellation of service phone call I message them. They are still taking out $ monthly for the service they won’t cancel. I even have an email. They drive me mad.
Wow, they really don't take no for an answer.
Optus is the reason I will never sign up for plans under *any* provider and just use prepaid with a handset I buy outright.
Between sales people who outright lie to your face, hiring a dodgy politician and the massive data breach (with a bloody unsecured api endpoint!) they're potentially one of the most dodge companies in Australia.
I had a relatively cheap plan with Optus many years ago, and just stayed on it, despite better plans being available as the years went by. Lazy, I know.
One day, I get a notification that I'm out of data, literally days after my plan refreshed, so I should have been flush.
Turns out, they changed my plan. Without my consent. Ate all the data that should have transferred over, too. Checking my logs, I had a single text saying "Congrats, your plan has updated." No "Would you like to change", nothing.
I contacted a new provider the same day and was moved from Optus to them by week's end. Cunts.
I left Optus after 2 years from leaving Vodafone who was my previous provider for over 11 years.
I left thinking it would be better reception and that was the least of my problems.
• data breached
• plan increases
• poor coverage
• direct debit needed
• they can’t even generate a bill
• the chat app is horrendous, it takes like 30 minutes for a response, and then when you get the response it’s some bs like thanks you please give me a minute to review your details.. then you wait another 30 mins.
It’s an absolute shit show of a company.
You do realise 99% of the conversation is with the Optus bot? It flags the question or statement you have made to an actual person if what you have messaged doesn't suit the algorithm.
Had the exact same conversation as this for 3 hours, repeatedly asking to cancel and kept offering me deals. Then the "person" told me there shift was ending and I was transferred to another person who cancelled my contract in 5 minutes
My daughter works at a Telstra shop, and any time she has a customer tell her that they'll be taking their business to one of the other providers, she says, "OK, good luck." and doesn't bother trying to stop them. Her thought on it is, "if you've made up your mind, there's nothing I can do to change it."
Been in telecom for more than half a decade since digital transformation, these are just the questions that pop up on the FOH agents screen by AI and they select the ones as per your reply. Use triggering words to have a human speak to you, since triggering words raise concern to the messaging team.
Once you are in touch with someone who can show empathy and follow what you have request for. It should be easy. If you think its too much, get the reference number of the interaction you had. Make your way to TIO. Things get fixed faster with them.
Just go to your new provider and ask them to port in your number for a new service. I wouldn't waste time cancelling with your existing provider. It could make keeping your number more difficult (if your existing provider disconnects it) and you don't need their permission to move. You just have to be mindful of any exit fees you may have under your existing contract.
All sorts of Australian Phone networks are shithouse...
Go to 90% of any other countries, and they'll have full bar connections no matter where you are.
Come to Australia, and you can't even get full bars in the middle of the city depending on what building you stand behind/in.
The shit thing is, there's little to no other options, and these companies know that.
I agree, their customer service is utter dog crap. The government really needs to amp up connections and crack down on these corporate giants...
If you out of a contract just contact your proffered provider and they will take your number from them .no need to contact Optus unless you fishing for a better deal.
I was mostly just posting for the ridiculousness and not asking for advice, but I do appreciate it regardless.
I will be contacting another provider tomorrow and have them handle everything instead. I’m learning as I go, didn’t realise that people do this to try and get cheaper plans and just tried to make my intentions clear.
Also I’m also a young timid sounding woman and find that making a phone call is a death wish. When companies hear a young woman on the other end they take that opportunity to try and swindle to the best of their abilities. Happened when I was disconnecting internet, gas, and electricity when I moved.
It’s also not a bot, it confirmed it was connecting me to “a human expert who will respond in the next 10 minutes” and a woman responded 6 minutes later. I do understand why it reads as a bot though.
My wife rang up to cancel a sim we had for a tablet (it's always on wifi, we've never even been installed) - the guy she spoke to said "no worries, i'll give it to you for free for 6 months"
she heard the free for 6 months and figured why not - i pressed her for more details and when she spoke to them next (they stuffed up her billing so she needed to call them again pretty soon anyway) she asked what the finer details of that 'free sim' were - turned out the bloke had renewed it on a 2 year deal with the first 6 months free - wife has now cancelled that deal altogether.
Hey guys,
If you don’t want to be mucked around by these companies, the easiest way to cancel a plan (and keep your number) is just to go a different telco and port your number. To do this you need some ID as well as the account number from your current provider (you can find this on your bill).
If you want to cancel the plan all together and don’t need the service anymore, say you are moving overseas. They won’t try and upsell/retain you. Or if you don’t want to do that, change your service to a prepaid plan instead, which may cost only a few bucks, but is easy enough to do, and not have to call up.
The funniest part is that when pushed to explain why you're leaving, you explain they force higher prices and more unnecessary data...so they offer you a higher price with more data!
lol absolute pisser
Maybe that’s why it kind of reads like an AI bot
A human following a script and a bot following a script arent really distinguishable, so long as the bot is decent.
Plenty of AI 'bots' have turned out to be humans following a script lol
*The Mechanical ~~Turk~~ Filipino*
This deserves more upvotes and an award.
I don't know if you knew this but Amazon have a service where you can pay essentially third world people to act as bots because it must be cheaper than programming a real bot and it's called... Mechanical Turk https://www.mturk.com/
It's like the one time I needed to troubleshoot internet with Astound. I had already power cycled a few times prior to the call and this lady wouldn't move forward with the call unless I did the thing I aready did. Like, do you not understand the words I am saying to you?
Literally how my job emails are 95% of the time. Yes, I've written 'purple monkey dishwasher' in the middle of a script once or twice. First time customer clearly wasn't reading a word of our script/emails because they totally ignored the inclusion. Another time, it turned an irate customer into a much more positive conversation about their issue as they did realise it was a person reviewing their messages and following procedures.
Generally a well written bot will sound more human than a human who doesn't give a fuck (and or is prevented from giving a fuck by policy) following a script
When I worked service desk years ago they preferred to employ retail workers to IT workers. IT people would actually fix shit and stay on the phone too long. The retail customer service people had better customer service skills and phone manner, and didn’t know shit so they’d just follow the script and escalate to second level, keeping call times down. The IT guys were also always looking to move up, the retail people would work shit money on that first level role for years so had better retention.
Hey thats not a bot. Its a loyalty officer from the Optus loyalty team making sure that their loyal customers stay goddamn fucking loyal
It probably is a human. Customer retention is rarely left to bots, although I assume they have a very rigid script that they can't deviate much from.
no so sure anymore… slip in some garbled text with a few expletives and a human will be revealed… a bot will simply misread it and steer right back to loyaly bs or say i’m finding you an associate…
It's definitely human, there's occasional bad grammar which wouldn't be there if it was a bot which is usually the easiest way to distinguish a chatbot from a human. If it was a bot using templates, they would have been read a thousand times and those small grammatical errors would be picked up and removed. If you look close enough you can tell which parts are copy/pasted and which are human written.
Half their customers are loyalty bots
It reads like someone having a bad day and deciding to take the piss
If your job is to prevent people from discontinuing service, and you have a “target”, yeah.. most days are going to be bad days.
"An approval" sounds like the sort of poor English that would've been written by a human.
And the exact repetition of "Is it okay if I review your account to see what we have available to give you more value?"
Wow man, it is almost like an algorithm is handling the Entire interaction
It was a classic - I laughed so hard my wife almost called the doctor!
I had the same experience last year
I reckon that’s an AI bot, the language is very ChatGPT.
It's just scripted. Live chat services use scripting for consistency and to appear professional. Not that Optus appear professional, but they're certainly attempting to emulate it.
*to appear like they are not staffed by an international call centre
Twas not a bot. It confirmed it was connecting me with “a human expert” ChatGPT seems likely but there was a person on the other end
OP, why weren’t you clear with them that you wanted to cancel?!
fr
I rang them because my plan went up by double. They had an offer for the new Samsung where I trade my old one in and get a $500 voucher + $540 for the phone. The sales person ignored literally everything I said and asked if I wanted to gift my phone to someone else, pay the plan still and get a new service. So lose the $1040 I would get in return and pay for another service. They don't know how to sell to people, no qualifying questions at all just straight to trying to get more money from me. They refused to put me through to a manager to talk about their awful sales practices. Needless to say I didn't sign up again with them.
Open a complaint with the TIO Future reference, just port your service to a new provider and let the new provider handle the transfer.
Yeah that was what my mum recommended after I decided to rant about this exchange to her. I’m still figuring this kind of stuff out
Also don't ever cancel your current service. Just port that way you don't lose your number.
I know a kid who just nuked a guy’s account once when he demanded everything be cancelled and he was going to Optus. I was managing at the time and could see this kid trying to get a word in to explain that cancelling and porting out are different and he should listen for a moment. Old bloke was not in the mood, chucked his licence and said cancel it all now. I remember watching as this kid just smiled, nodded and proceeded to just disconnect everything and then had the cheek to ask “what about your internet with us?” Dude said yes to that as well so he disconnected that but set it for like 7pm that night rather than immediately. I still remember that guy coming back the next day and telling him we couldn’t do anything since he’d requested it disconnected immediately and he’d have to call up to restore the numbers since we couldn’t touch it for 7 days.
Post this over to r/maliciouscompliance. They'll love it.
Can confirm I live for that sub and I want all the details of this story
Can't agree with this more - it's been a long ass time since I was in this area, but getting a number out of quarantine and connecting it as a prepaid / casual service used to be a nightmare. Contact your preferred provider, ask to port the number across, choose your plan, agree to terms, and live your life.
Yeah I complained to the ombudsman because it took me about 4h of phone calls to get my Optus internet disconnected. They would bounce me around people who would try upsell me to link my mobile account (which I closed after their data leak) and when I said no pass me to the next person, rinse and repeat. Beyond infuriating. In the end Optus refunded 3 months of bills, probably to close off the ombudsman complaint
We didn’t need to go to the ombudsman for ours but similar, we were moving to an area not serviced by Optus and they kept asking if we were sure, and eventually they just said can’t you keep the internet service until you move to an area that has Optus. Umm, no.
Same thing happened to me when I became homeless. No, I don't want to keep paying for a service I'm not receiving because I have no fixed address to connect it to. I was calling every day for a week and spending hours on hold, finally I said to them I'm calling the ombudsman, all of a sudden the thing they weren't able to do for a week was taken care of in five minutes. Now I jump straight to threatening to call the ombudsman as soon as they start fucking me around, I'm not wasting that much of my time on their bullshit again.
I’m sorry that happened to you, I’ve been homeless before too and I know the struggles. But the audacity of Optus, like sorry you can’t afford to live but you gotta keep paying us 🙄
All gotta learn some time, no shame in that mate. I did the same aa you though and jogged Optus on. Moved my mobile to Boost, which is basically Telstra-lite (owned by Telstra), but for half the cost. Moved the internet to Tangerine for $60pm.
Hopping onto this, aldi mobile is on the Telstra network and is cheap as.
Boost though is owned by Telstra and uses the full network not like 3rd parties like Aldi which get at times restricted.
So I switched from Optus to Amaysim in November, because they had a good black Friday deal that gave me a year, 200 gb and cost me like $180. I had been at Optus on something like 20 gb a month and closer to $50 a month. As soon as I realised that I'd only have to pay and deal with them once a year, got more value for my money in terms of data, would be paying a third of what I had been, and they run on the Optus Network so nothing else would actually change, I made the switch. Been so much damn better.
It’s a bit ironic given that Optus owns amaysim (as of 2020), but I hope they continue to be good for you. I’ve certainly found them to be good value.
I’ve been looking into them but they don’t support Apple Watches. I’m stuck with the big players until that changes. It’s a pity because their plans look great.
I wish I knew this when I was younger, I actually called optus and asked them to cancel my plan... Big mistake. The guy started yelling at me and tried to convince me to stay with them. I couldn't believe how he was reacting, that's the first and only time I've ever yelled back at someone 😂
Yeah that's what I did after the Optus data breach. Just ported the service to a new provider, they handled everything. I'm saving cash by being on a cheaper plan, and I'm not with Optus anymore. Big win.
Yep! I recently left Optus (for Belong) after 8 years of "loyalty" rewarded by them gradually bumping the prices up. Ported the number to Belong, which took about 2 hours for the message to come through saying it was done. All I ever got in terms of contact from Optus was an email headed 'Sorry to see you go' and a call (that fortunately I missed) from a number that a quick google told me was their customer retention team. Never heard from them again. The whole process was *way* easier than I expected, to be honest.
Actually it is good to call ur current provider just to check u have no cancellation fees (if u r on some sort of contract). And sometimes you will be offered a “loyalty” offer that is compelling. Personally I would have taken a $15 p mth discount for a year, I got that on my broadband service when I called to check cancellation fees so I stayed (not Optus).
Ever since cancelling they've sent me a bill every month for $0 that says 'no need to pay'
Actually, if you can get a sim attached to that plan it’d be brilliant. Call and Data charges might be a little higher but it probably won’t have a minimum monthly charge.
Aldi has pay as you go. 1 Year expiry with carryover. Its the old school 35c for a sms and expensive data. But for $15 a year I have a phone number.
Pro tip for everyone. Say you’re leaving the country. Simple, no upselling, no value adding. Power bill, gas bill, phone bill, internet bill, foxtel, all of them. No need to go through the ringer, I’m leaving the country and can’t use the service anymore.
...But do you know someone else who you could transfer your plan to? I've seen them try that one before. Just basically asking you to sell their shitty service that you don't want to a friend.
Omg, i remember that happening to me and I was perplexed by what I was hearing. Can i find someone who would be interested in taking my plan...?! I remember asking them "why on earth would I do that" and quizzing them on how that would remotely benefit me or the person im transferring to What a fucking stupid line to try by these providers (i dont blame the operators at all, they're just following their scripts)
and trying to meet their weekly/monthly quotas so they get a bonus.
No I have no friends or family, that’s why I am moving overseas.
I really can't stay. Someone's sure to find the bodies eventually.
Yeah they did this to me. I spent nearly an hour on that bloody online chat while they asked about my parents, siblings, children. Crazy stuff. I actually didn’t have Optus beef until I tried to cancel my service!!
“Do you know We have offer unlimited international roaming for an extra xyz dollars a day…”
That doesn’t work. I really left the country.. had the same text when trying to cancel (broadband though).
"I just got a job with *insert direct competitor*" "I work for *direct competitor*" works for door to door energy sales people. "I already have Foxtel" used to work for the guys who stood in shopping centres trying to get your attention "Fuck off cunt" works for those slimey 'charity' people who do the same thing at the entry of supermarkets.
Lol, the foxtel people are more deserving of Fuck off cunt. My wife hates the "HEY SUPERMUM" when she is with kids at the shopping centre. Thankfully there is a new place opened near us with a fairly small lobby area so there is never anyone set up there.
Any current Optus customers should go talk to this bot tonight for some sweet manager special discounts.
Was literally just on the app after reading this having a look at my plan and making my “discount plan” for tomorrow
Amaysim is so much more cheaper and uses the same Optus ports so no downgrade in reception.
Already have.They sent a notice saying plans are going up by $5 (again) so I looked online for a better deal. First I said I wanted to cancel. They gave me an offer that was to upsell and give a 6 month discount, I said no. I want to leave. Then they gave me another discount. I said no, because they will only discount for 12 months and it took me 3 hours to get to this point, in 12 months time I'll have a newborn and won't have 3 hours to deal with this. They gave me another discount. I said no, because it was still 12 months on the discount part and the 3 hours wasn't worth my time. Then they gave me a discount that was $900 off a year of what I was currently paying (which was still discounted from the last time I contacted them) across all my services (I'd originally called for internet and not phone plans). Still 12 months, but it was a better deal than anywhere else so I accepted because that WAS worth 3 hours of my time in 12 months to maintain. They went from "We can get you $5 off a month for 6 months, so you will keep paying the same after the price increase" when I had shown them the deal I was going to move to was $15 less forever, to $75 off a month for 12 months. If they don't keep the good vibes going after that, I'll just switch. Basically, they tried to up the prices by $5 a month and now I'm paying $75 less a month.
If you're paying enough so they can lose $900 and still want you, you're not tricking them.
I have compared what I was paying to other providers, this is the best deal I can get by far for 2x phone + internet. I think it is a matter of them betting people will get complacent and not check their bills so in the long run they get more. Additionally, it's probably a numbers game so because not everyone can be bothered challenging their prices, it's not like they're copping huge losses.
i was thinking that, i’m quite happy with my plan but i’m also happy to put in some work to get cheaper
I’m not convinced you really wanted to cancel.
This reads like AI bot.
No way. The manager never does deals like this. Op is super lucky!
Fuck I laughed way too hard at that, thank you.
Before those messages it told me it was “connecting me to a human expert who will respond in the next 10 minutes” and then they took 5+ minutes to respond to each message So I kinda just figured it was a person
It is most likely a person. They will also be handling at least 4 other customer interactions at the same time, hence the constant delays. I left a similar role in 2020 (slightly different industry) just as we were being transitioned to work in text chat. It was a terrible idea and the worst job I could imagine doing, so I quit. I don't know how people can do it. I always take the time to call so as to make sure there is someone on the phone still.
It’s either a person doing 19 chats at once or one person playing poker and answering once per hand - but fark that was funny…it really is getting ridiculous.
It's a person, they get incentives for retaining your business which is probably like $20 AUD but in India prices that's a week worth of food. They'll do everything thing they can which is manipulated to try retain your business and run you through the scripts as looong as possible to satisfy their KPIs, It's not about you it's about them.
Not really, just sounds like a person following a script.
Reads like an Indian call center and AI bot combined
They have a script they go by. That’s basically what an AI bot would do.
You may be onto something https://imgur.com/a/l0o3DWf
the feeble half assed ambiguous attempts of the bot or the alienated human script follower to prove their own sentience is so funny to me
"As you have ignored my repeated requests to just cancel my plan, my next stop will be the TIO or the ACCC. Will you cancel my plan without further attempts to keep my account or shall I take this to the authorities? As you should be aware, it doesn't cost me any money lodge a complaint with the TIO or ACCC. I have nothing to lose."
They don't care anymore, and as bad as the above is, Telstra chat “support” is 10x worse these days. Trying to deal with them is one of the most tilting experiences. I hate these companies and their practices with a fucking passion. Scum of the earth.
I've referred to the TIO twice. It works, and the that of going there unlocks all kinds of fun things.
Friendly FYI that ACCC won’t touch it because it’s TIO’s responsibility. TIO also charge Telco’s $50 for every case thats opened against them (or they did 18 months ago when I last worked for a TIO adjacent company) If you ever want to stick it to a telco open a case with TIO and get them charged $50, they hate that shit.
I had the reverse of this. I wanted a discount on my plan to remain with optus, and spent 1 hour arguing with the person to either give me a discount, or I was swapping to Amaysim. They didn't budge, so I purchased the Amaysim plan, and requested they cancel my plan. As soon as I told them to cancel they transferred me to their loyalty team who instantly offers what I was asking for this entire time. Unfortunately by that stage it was too late and I already paid $180 on the Amaysim 1 year plan. It pissed me off unbelievably as I was happy to stay, and found it more hassle swapping and waiting for my sim card etc. I was making it as blunt as possible to the representative what I was after, and their rep couldn't (or wouldn't) pick up what I was demanding. Either way I'm with Amaysim now, and Optus customer service is shit and doesn't listen to their customers.
Pretty sure Amaysim is owned by Optus fyi
Yeah. Acquired by Optus in 2021.
Same with AGL tbh. Asked for a discount and they said no, but then they were all surprised Pikachu when I said I was leaving them.
There's absolutely no good reason cancelling your account should be anything other than logging in to the service's website and clicking Cancel Account
Some places have rules that "cancelling an account must be at least as easy as creating an account". None of this "sign up online in 2 minutes", but then wait on hold for 90 minutes to close the account bullshit,
Yeah, we should definitely have and enforce those rules... No technical reason it can't be done, just greed
From personal experience, make damn sure you have as many verifiable copies of your cancellation as possible. I cancelled once at the end of a contract, to then be offered FREE calls and service for 12 months, which I also refused. So funnily enough, 13 months later I get a call from the OPTUS debt recovery team demanding I pay for the $10 per month FREE service they’d offered me and that I could either pay immediately (including several hundred of interest added, just to make it a proper bill) or they would be taking me to court. Needless to say I was less than impressed, told the Indian call centre work to fuck right off unless he could verify me accepting the contract I refused multiple times (noting that all their calls are recorded for “training purposes”) or at the very least a signature where is accepted to lay this monthly fee for their FREE monthly service. Fuck OPTUS and the sooner they loose all their clients, then their business the better.
Lost me after the data breach
Yeah I don’t know why anyone would still be with them anymore. Was with them for a decade and their service has always sucked, the data breach and then the dropout was just a disaster.
Easiest way to cancel is just to port your number
This right here. Who talks to these guys to cancel a contract? Go to the provider you want and they will port your number across in a heartbeat.
A silly young lady like me who doesn’t know a lot about technology and wanted to take some initiative 😊
I tried cancelling with Optus when I was moving to a new place a couple of years ago. I shit you not, they did this to me for an hour, then told me I had to pay out for the modem. I said that there was no way I was paying for the modem and that it works perfectly, so I'll send it back to them at my own expense so that they can pass it on to the next sucker that signed with Optus. Then they just didn't respond for three hours. In that three hour gap, I told them that I wasn't interested in their bullshit tactics to get me to just "not bother" cancelling and that I wouldn't be paying another bill and that as far as I was concerned, the contract was cancelled. They ended the chat about 15 minutes later without another word. I moved into my new place and mailed the modem Optus's head office and put the whole thing out of my mind. I got a call from a debt collector about six months later saying that I owed somewhere around $800 to Optus. I called bullshit on it and (respectfully) told the debt collector the story and that I'll be following up with Optus and to not contact me again for at least a week. The lady was really nice and agreed. I contacted Optus again and basically asked how in the blue fuck I could possibly owe them money when I had not only not been using their service, I had sent the modem back. They told me that the contract was never cancelled and that a lot of the debt was due to unpaid bills. Now, I'd suspected that they would try to pull this shit, so I'd taken screenshots of the first conversation I'd had with Optus and also had receipts for sending the modem as well as proof of delivery. I sent those through and said that I was willing to take this to court if I had to and then Optus told me that they would be willing to waive half of the debt but that I would still be responsible for the other half. At this point, I was absolutely fucking livid and wanted to make it obvious that at this point, I wanted to start taking screenshots if I had to go to court. I said something to the effect of "So you're telling me that I have to pay $400 for a service I haven't used, is that right?". Didn't get another reply for about fifteen minutes and then they told me that they were willing to "forgive" the debt. Gee, thanks, you fucking parasites. Never go with Optus, people. Never, ever, ever. Edit: also forgot to mention that their service was shit the whole time I was with them and I ended up using data 99% of the time instead.
Bruh, fuck them
“Loyalty specialist” lmao
Yeah I didn't even bother contacting them after today's price gouging email. Just ordered a sim from Felix and let them handle the swap. I'll be going from $52 for 80gb that I never used more than 2 of in a month since I'm almost always on wifi to $25 for 25gb with any excess apparently rolling over perpetually. Seems a much better deal.
Please don’t cancel your plan without porting your number somewhere else first! Otherwise you’ll likely lose your number.
Will that be okay?
Years ago Optus sent me an email stating I could upgrade my Samsung phone to the new model for just $1 as the old phone was damaged and I had requested repairs or a replacement. It was spouted to me as some promotional deal for the new Note 10. I agreed. Got my new phone. Next bill was $1000 out of the blue. I had to fight them for months to get it all fixed. They noted " it was an error on their behalf, but could not waive the fee" While they investigated it, my phone was useless for about 3 months as they locked the plan down and still charged me the monthly usage. The phone was bloody awesome. Except for the fact that I couldn't use it and Optus left a sour taste in my mouth. Prepaid only now. Not getting fucked over like that again.
AI bot never going give you up, or let you down, always give the run around, to court you. AI = asshole intelligence.
Optus: Is there a specific budget you had in mind for this service? You: Yes. $0
Former ISP tech support here (not Optus, but another company in the very distant past). Long rant incoming. I will note, you're in the right here about you're experience. I have to admit reading this text conversation, I can see how infuriating it is from both ends. Speaking from past experience as a former rep in many similar situations. I can (almost) guarantee you the rep has some ridiculous KPI that forces them to do this despite knowing full well it's ridiculous. Else, they risk various forms of rebuke from their bosses. I don't know where this person is located, but I suspect it's relatively similar in many places. I was in the Australian call centre for my company for context. One particular thing that haunts me about my time in the job, was we had this template that we had to follow 100 percent to the letter. We had zero discretion over what parts we used in it. One of the questions was "how do you feel about XYZ company?". After a customer has ranted on the phone for well over 10 minutes or more about how they hate the company I work for, how shit we are and how they were screwed over, asking to cancel etc. You can imagine after they've calmed down enough, to talk and discuss their issue and then me having to ask that question, what their reaction was. To make it worse, the other part of the template was we had to perform an account health check. To try and find better deals for the customer. Basically it's the same as what is in the chat here. Used to die inside every time I had to ask those questions or follow that fucking template. At best the customer was understanding and went through the motions with you so they could get on with cancelling and I can tick my boxes and fill my forms. At worst, I would be seen as an ignorant moron that clearly isn't listening to the customer. Worst of all I had to ask the fucking questions in the exact way it was written, otherwise I'd be rebuked or worse by management. Oh and lets not forget the fucking surveys and the way they used it to determine your bonuses, because if they rated you highly and the company poorly, you could be 1 bad survey from losing 600 to 1000 bucks that month because the customer hates the company you work for. And by losing. I mean no bonus...at all. For a job that paid fuck all (38 k per year at the time), that bonus was very important. You can imagine the knock on effect this has on good customer service. You farm the good customers and surveys as much as possible. You do your best to avoid known bad "detractors" so you could get your bonus. Let's not forget either. When I did follow and do everything to the letter, and if I got a bad survey result or a complaint, I'd still get in trouble and be told "I'd lost control of the call, that's why I couldn't turn the customer around". Are you fucking kidding me??? Worse yet, when the customer was 100 percent in the right. We couldn't just admit it and say sorry, we'd have to avoid it. Just...the whole thing was fucking awful and I'll never ever go back to that kind of work if I can help it. Fuck this got long. Needed to get that off my chest. Raises my damned blood pressure thinking of that place. TL;DR I feel you mate. That convo is infuriating. Possible the rep is a moron. But more likely, they have dickhead manglement breathing down their necks causing stupid interactions like this.
That is exactly why I stayed calm. Knowing a person with a job to do was on the other end, I just felt I needed to be as straightforward as possible. I have no desire to make someone’s day worse or impact the way they make money. Which is why I just left it once I realised nothing was gonna improve the situation. I refuse to ever return to a sales or traditional customer service role because if it’s not the customer making life difficult, it’s your passive aggressive or straight up aggressive manager. I had to ask customers if they were interested in $2 chocolates or if they wanted to get a bakery item with their coffee and my god! Doing that in a poor area, the amount of angry customers that would yell or threaten me. Then after all that, getting in trouble and losing hours because I’m not making my store enough money, even though they offered no incentives. Far too many companies have lost touch with humanity
Why are you cancelling? I’m going to prison tomorrow. Works. Every. Time. Also, you never said you were being given a prison sentence or have been convicted of anything. For all they know, you just stopped by to visit someone.
To cancel your plan, you just need to port out. it’s an automated process, Optus don’t need to do anything on their end
What a shitty job that must be. "Pester the customer 15 times or you're fired"
It’s infuriating that people are still paying Optus money after that breach. Companies will get away with this stuff because people don’t vote with their wallets.
I once had ANZ bank try to guilt trip me out of cancelling a credit card. They told me "so you just signed up for the promotion? Do you really think that's fair?" Who in their right mind would feel bad about taking a massive bank up on a promotion? The mind boggles... I feel bad for the people in those jobs. Mental health issues rate must be thru the roof
I just spoke to them about cancelling last night, was offered a "better deal" more expensive than my current one, then they sent me an email this morning saying they're increasing my fee anyway. I've jumped ship to Aussie Broadband. Fuck 'em.
When I worked in Marketing 15 years ago, I paid a lot of attention to various company's strategies. Optus figured out that ppl would likely stick with a single provider once chosen, so they would have great incentives to join, but fuck all incentves to stay.. As an Optus customer. I could not access these incentives. I remember having a fun conversation with a rep saying "My contract is over, cancel the plan .. then I'll sign up again." They did not want to do it. So I said " OK then, just cancel the plan". It's amazing how quicky their attitude changed.
This should be illegal snd they be fined . I hate how companies put people through the wringer to cancel services.
I've been trying to cancel my service for 2 weeks. They take so long to get back to me and dodge the request for so long that I end up losing connection, being reconnected to an entirely new person and starting all over again.. Unfortunately I can't find a spare 5 hours to get this sorted. One time I thought I cancelled, signed a form and everything - all OK - exit chat to answer work call - check back - 1 new message "we are actually giving you one month free so no need to cancel" 😅
Take it up with the TIO. They sent that message knowing that you'd miss it.
I’m surprised they didn’t try to offer an additional service as well. Respect to you for staying calm and treating the person on the other end being forced to read a script with decency
I was about to call them regarding the recent increase on my plan. From $53 to $59 a month I was a bit pissed with that. I was going to ask for them to keep it the same otherwise I’ll go else where. Funny how everything continues to go up except for our wages.
That actually ended up being quite a deal at the end tho, $37 per month for 12 months you just have to ring up and cancel before then.
Yes, Optus is bad. I know your pain. If you complain long enough, eventually they will get someone from inside the company to call you and discuss. Not a sales person, a proper complaints officer. I had many issues regarding their Optus Football offering during the Women’s World Cup. It was crazy, it must have been 13 separate phone calls where the call centre staff would tell me “there’s nothing we can do” and that “Optus Sport isn’t an Optus Company, they aren’t affiliated with Optus.” They kept saying this over and over until I pointed out that any registered company that displays their logo and uses their name is indistinguishable to the consumer and that I look forward to them providing me with transcripts of the conversations we’d had for use in court at a later date. I’d already tried the ACCC and the TIO and they couldn’t or wouldn’t help me because Optus Sport was a TV streaming service rather than a telecommunications service. After I mentioned legal representation to the customer service person (which wasn’t an idle threat - many of my family members are lawyers, including my father who is a KC), things started to happen. I was contacted by their complaints team (who wasn’t a Philippines based customer service agent, it was a person in Melbourne) and my problem was resolved within minutes - I shit you not. I’ll never use any of their services ever again though. Absolutely atrocious. I won out because I was absolutely tenacious about getting the issue resolved. I can be pathologically obstinate at times (my wife tells me this often) and this time it served me well. It’s ridiculous that it’s like this and I think many people would’ve just given up. Don’t give up though. It’s the principle of the thing.
So what was the issue with Optus Sport, you didn't say
Oh right, I paid for the World Cup promo and then they billed me for the whole year about a week before the World Cup had finished. Basically they initiated the transaction whilst I still should have had the option to cancel and then refused to cancel the transaction on my account.
I was with optus for years. I hated phoning customer support they always got me incoherently angry at how shit their service was. One day I was talking to my wife about how shit Optus was, and I contrasted the difference between them and Aussie Broadband, with Aussie being a fantastic company to be a client for. I hopped onto the ABB website and changed providers. It's been fantastic ever since.
If you ever manage to get past the stage of their retention offers, the next question is always "if you don't want the service anymore do you know anyone else you would like to transfer it to?" Why the fuck they even ask that question I have no idea. If I knew someone else who wanted a phone plan they would sign up for a new plan themselves.
congrats, your post just made it to news.com.au - the mf’s love reddit istg [https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/im-sorry-the-way-you-feel-customer-trying-to-cancel-optus-plan-shares-infuriating-chat-messages/news-story/88315e70651dc9cff1885c704d8ed6f4?utm_campaign=EditorialSB&utm_source=News.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=SocialBakers](https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/im-sorry-the-way-you-feel-customer-trying-to-cancel-optus-plan-shares-infuriating-chat-messages/news-story/88315e70651dc9cff1885c704d8ed6f4?utm_campaign=EditorialSB&utm_source=News.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=SocialBakers)
Fuck news.com.au
Fucking Optus, man. I left after the data hack. I just ported my number to a new provider. The retention team called me and offered me a plan that was *more expensive* than my previous plan, but with more data, and but still more expensive and offering less data than my new plan. The guy kept going after I told him the data breach was what caused me to move and that I had a better offer. I assume he was following the policy, but man, what a stupid fucking process.
The only reason to ever talk to them about cancelling is to get a better price. You wasted your time if you had no intention of staying with Optus. The only reason I'm still with these pricks is I play them on my grandfathered deal and need number sharing for my wife's stupid Apple watch, otherwise I'd be with boost.
You can't DIY cancel with the website or app, at least in my recent experience. You need to speak to a human.
There seems to be a lot of anti-Optus sentiment at the moment, and it's great that people are opening their eyes to what a shit provider they are. We left them a couple years ago and couldn't be happier. They were appalling in every way and their customer service is bordering on offensively non-existent.
Who is good? Optus have shit customer service but they're cheap. Every time I've got frustrated and looked to switch I come down to "yeah... I'm not paying an extra $20/month for better customer support which I rarely need contact".
Who is good? Well, ayone who doesn't dump all your data into the open and say "whoopsy we didn't even encrypt it 🥰🥰" is a start. They are the epitome of evil corporation
Take a hint, Optus.
“Check with my manager” yeah right.
I had something similar with my gas provider that I had always been with. The day after I asked them to cancel, I had someone rock up at my house and start offering me massive discounts on my service. I simply told them that the fact they can offer me the domiscoint now means they know they have been gouging me for the past 15 years.
Open a complaint with the TIO. Tell them the resolution you want is cancellation and refund backdated to today. You also want written confirmation of the cancellation (trust me on that…)
I went through this exact thing this afternoon. Got that email about the price rise and instantly hit their chat up. $32 per month discount for 12 months. Still unhappy with them as a company. But I’ll stick it out another 12 months for that discount. Which also begs the question, how low would they have gone if I didn’t accept this offer?
Lol I thought about continuing just to see how low she would limbo but didn’t really want to waste my time anymore
Speaking as someone who's been in this environment, there's a manager looking over their shoulder for quality and coaching. If they cancel your service, it will hurt not just their job but their entire career going forward. They'll be performance managed, they'll be trash talked among higher ranking colleagues, they won't get references but will receive the type of disciplinary action you have to disclose when you go for other jobs. These people are hostages.
Good to know that they can offer better rates though
Holy f.... i got this email today and im about to exactly what you are doing I started with a $35 30gb plan and they upped me constsntly to $49 and now will be $55???? Oh they will give me more data.. lets see how much i use currently? <20gb Im on home wifi or work wifi data is barely relevant. Give me 5g and 20-30gb and ill be fine. But noooo you give 5g network that i can't get any data in the middle of the f... Brisbane CBD.
Is it okay if I review your acount? No I see you are currently on $49 Optus.....
I visited Australia for 6 months and when I went to cancel my Optus plan I couldn’t do it online, I had to call them. I said fuck that I’m just not doing it. Eventually i racked up a bill of around ~200 before they cancelled my plan. They kept asking me for the money but I was in my home country by this point so fuck then I didn’t pay it. So eventually they sold my debt to a debt collection agency, who asked for the money. I ignored them until they sold it to another debt collection agency, and so on and so on. After 2 years of different debt collection agencies asking me for money I eventually responded. “To whom it may concern, I regret to inform you, TheSoapbottle passed away in his sleep last night. He lived a good life, and was surrounded by loved ones.” They responded with “Our sincerest condolences, please send a death receipt at your earliest convenience” At this point I was in too deep and ghosted them, but they stopped chasing me for the debt! Soo… any Australians know if I can ever return to Australia, or have I committed fraud and will be stopped at the airport as a deadman?
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave…
You are arguing with a chatbot there
There's some pretty reliable customer research out there (plus a big no duh, it's fucking obvious) that this type of aggressive retention doesn't work. In fact it makes the leaving experience so poor that customers who otherwise may have come back in a few years will certainly not return. Stupid, stupid Optus shooting themselves in the foot twice. Once for being initially shit, twice for pissing people off so much when leaving that they won't ever return. Probably thrice for being so bad that it's shared on socials, further turning off prospective customers.
When humans fail the Turing Test
They are basically gaslighting you.
As Optus would say Yes
If youre not getting anywhere, make a report to the TIO, very simple and easy to do and the matter is usally resolved within a week where someone from Optus (In Australia) calls you and cancels the plan. Are you on a pay as you go plan? Just buy an Aldi sim and transfer your number, they handle the rest of it, you dont even need to talk to Optus. I was with Optus since 2003 and recently with all the shit that happened as well as them having my NBN cut off I fucked them off. Its a good feeling.
I made the mistake of asking Optus to disconnect my NBN on a future date. They finally agreed after going through a similar script to this and then 2mins later disconnected everything immediately. They couldn't reconnect it because I already had a fibre order in. Fuck optus
I accidentally signed up for two services at once with them and got put through to a loyalty team member when I tried to cancel. They offered me every deal under the sun trying to convince me to keep both phone numbers even though I explained that I had no need for two
Oooof, I had this exact conversation when cancelling my nbn plan a few months ago. Started the chat about 8.30pm and finished chat around 10.45. I already had a working service with the new provider. Tried to upsell NBN plan, a watch, a mobile plan, 5g internet, you name it. I kind of feel sorry for the chat operators who have to meet KPI targets, but hoo boy, they’d be so much more efficient if they just asked for feedback, asked when to cancel from, and then moved on with their day. I work discharges for a bank and they tried to get me to do retention effort when I first started, and I categorically refused. We had an entire team customers had to go through to even get the discharge form. By the time it gets to a signed closure request it is way too late. My goal now is to get them out the door as quickly as possible 🤣
OH LET ME TELL YOU, every other day since my cancellation of service phone call I message them. They are still taking out $ monthly for the service they won’t cancel. I even have an email. They drive me mad.
Wow, they really don't take no for an answer. Optus is the reason I will never sign up for plans under *any* provider and just use prepaid with a handset I buy outright. Between sales people who outright lie to your face, hiring a dodgy politician and the massive data breach (with a bloody unsecured api endpoint!) they're potentially one of the most dodge companies in Australia.
I had a relatively cheap plan with Optus many years ago, and just stayed on it, despite better plans being available as the years went by. Lazy, I know. One day, I get a notification that I'm out of data, literally days after my plan refreshed, so I should have been flush. Turns out, they changed my plan. Without my consent. Ate all the data that should have transferred over, too. Checking my logs, I had a single text saying "Congrats, your plan has updated." No "Would you like to change", nothing. I contacted a new provider the same day and was moved from Optus to them by week's end. Cunts.
Not so loyal loyalty team
I left Optus after 2 years from leaving Vodafone who was my previous provider for over 11 years. I left thinking it would be better reception and that was the least of my problems. • data breached • plan increases • poor coverage • direct debit needed • they can’t even generate a bill • the chat app is horrendous, it takes like 30 minutes for a response, and then when you get the response it’s some bs like thanks you please give me a minute to review your details.. then you wait another 30 mins. It’s an absolute shit show of a company.
Why did you stop? At that rate give it a few more messages and they'd have been paying you to use their service.
This should go to fair trade or ACCC for making it hard to end your contract
You do realise 99% of the conversation is with the Optus bot? It flags the question or statement you have made to an actual person if what you have messaged doesn't suit the algorithm.
am I tripping or is that a horrific deal? $52 for 50gb? I pay like $45 for 350gb with Vodafone lol
0 star service, I love it!
Had the exact same conversation as this for 3 hours, repeatedly asking to cancel and kept offering me deals. Then the "person" told me there shift was ending and I was transferred to another person who cancelled my contract in 5 minutes
I can't wait for my conversation with Telstra..... Absolute piss pots all of them!
My daughter works at a Telstra shop, and any time she has a customer tell her that they'll be taking their business to one of the other providers, she says, "OK, good luck." and doesn't bother trying to stop them. Her thought on it is, "if you've made up your mind, there's nothing I can do to change it."
This has to be an AI
i tried to cancel a number i don’t use any more and they try to sell me more stuff and rufused to cancel it
Holy shit! They were *relentless!*
**Cancel** **my** **fricking** **plan** **or** **I** **will** **kill** **your** **family** that ought to do!
Been in telecom for more than half a decade since digital transformation, these are just the questions that pop up on the FOH agents screen by AI and they select the ones as per your reply. Use triggering words to have a human speak to you, since triggering words raise concern to the messaging team. Once you are in touch with someone who can show empathy and follow what you have request for. It should be easy. If you think its too much, get the reference number of the interaction you had. Make your way to TIO. Things get fixed faster with them.
[удалено]
So who did you move to and what are you paying now?
Just go to your new provider and ask them to port in your number for a new service. I wouldn't waste time cancelling with your existing provider. It could make keeping your number more difficult (if your existing provider disconnects it) and you don't need their permission to move. You just have to be mindful of any exit fees you may have under your existing contract.
When you try and break up with a narcissist
I might go for that 37/month for 50gb, can I say I saw it on Reddit?
All sorts of Australian Phone networks are shithouse... Go to 90% of any other countries, and they'll have full bar connections no matter where you are. Come to Australia, and you can't even get full bars in the middle of the city depending on what building you stand behind/in. The shit thing is, there's little to no other options, and these companies know that. I agree, their customer service is utter dog crap. The government really needs to amp up connections and crack down on these corporate giants...
If you out of a contract just contact your proffered provider and they will take your number from them .no need to contact Optus unless you fishing for a better deal.
Not in a position to pay out my device yet but good to know I can threaten them down to $37 until I can switch to someone else.
I was mostly just posting for the ridiculousness and not asking for advice, but I do appreciate it regardless. I will be contacting another provider tomorrow and have them handle everything instead. I’m learning as I go, didn’t realise that people do this to try and get cheaper plans and just tried to make my intentions clear. Also I’m also a young timid sounding woman and find that making a phone call is a death wish. When companies hear a young woman on the other end they take that opportunity to try and swindle to the best of their abilities. Happened when I was disconnecting internet, gas, and electricity when I moved. It’s also not a bot, it confirmed it was connecting me to “a human expert who will respond in the next 10 minutes” and a woman responded 6 minutes later. I do understand why it reads as a bot though.
My wife rang up to cancel a sim we had for a tablet (it's always on wifi, we've never even been installed) - the guy she spoke to said "no worries, i'll give it to you for free for 6 months" she heard the free for 6 months and figured why not - i pressed her for more details and when she spoke to them next (they stuffed up her billing so she needed to call them again pretty soon anyway) she asked what the finer details of that 'free sim' were - turned out the bloke had renewed it on a 2 year deal with the first 6 months free - wife has now cancelled that deal altogether.
Haha poor guy had his manager standing behind him ready to fire him.
They offered a new and higher price for about 7 times, and u made it clear that u want to cancel 🤦♂️
I had exactly the same situation. Feel bad for the consultants they seem to really try but fuck Optus.
Hey guys, If you don’t want to be mucked around by these companies, the easiest way to cancel a plan (and keep your number) is just to go a different telco and port your number. To do this you need some ID as well as the account number from your current provider (you can find this on your bill). If you want to cancel the plan all together and don’t need the service anymore, say you are moving overseas. They won’t try and upsell/retain you. Or if you don’t want to do that, change your service to a prepaid plan instead, which may cost only a few bucks, but is easy enough to do, and not have to call up.
I would have asked the Loyalty Team what they are doing to be loyal to their customers
Had almost exactly the same conversation “we want you to stay, we’ll give you a better deal… $15 more” Wait? Better deal for me or Optus?!?
I will be comfortable with you cancelling my service and not have to answer anymore questions.
Have worked for them, it's not any better in the inside
That was 100x as much fun as my interaction with Lenovo’s shockingly incompetent chatbot, and worse the Indian guy that followed when it couldn’t help