Optus customer fumes after she is charged $1600 in just two minutes – and she didn’t even use her phone

A high-profile Optus customer is furious after discovering a huge phone bill during an overseas trip.

Melbourne-based LGBTIQ activist and campaigner Sally Rugg claims Optus charged her $1,600 within two minutes of landing in London a few weeks ago.

The embattled telecoms company is facing huge fallout after a major outage on November 8 that crippled millions of customers, leaving them without mobile phone or internet reception for hours.

Thousands of businesses were also affected; some lost thousands of dollars when payment systems that relied on Optus connections crashed.

Ms Rugg shared the shocking news on social media platform X on Saturday.

“Want to hear another @Optus horror story?” she wrote.

‘I landed in London two weeks ago and within two minutes I was charged $1600…I didn’t use my phone at all, it was in my pocket (pinging for texts about crazy charges).

‘@Optus tells me the charges are “valid” so I don’t want to waive them.’

Ms Rugg added: ‘This isn’t even one of those old-fashioned returns from abroad to a $1,600 bill because you didn’t know roaming was happening – this happened within two minutes without me even touching my phone !’

An Optus representative quickly responded to Ms Rugg’s public post.

“Hi Sally, I’m sorry to hear about your problem with roaming charges. This is where you can file your complaint, followed by a link,” they said, followed by a link to a website.

A company spokesperson also responded: “Referrals will be made to our Customer Relations Group, which is the highest escalation point within our organization and handles both internal and external complaints.”

Ms Rugg, who was the creative and campaigns director of left-wing activist organization GetUP between 2013 and 2018, said she had already spoken to Optus staff who informed her that “the allegations were valid”.

One commenter, claiming to be an ex-telco regulator, urged Ms Rugg to formally file a complaint against Optus.

‘Make sure you get a complaints number and then report it to the ombudsman. These allegations are unacceptable,” they said.

‘Thats crazy! They should absolutely refund you!’ said another, to which Ms Rugg replied: ‘Oh, I certainly haven’t paid it (and have disabled my direct debit so @Optus can’t take it off my hands until I can pay the charges for Consumer Affairs).’

Some sympathized with Ms. Rugg’s plight and shared stories of similar experiences.

“This happened to me today too!” wrote one.

‘Within five minutes of landing in Dubai, I received three emails and messages in a row saying I had spent $150 on roaming (which I turned off on my phone). Crossed out? Sure.’

Others labeled the allegations “outrageous.”

Ny Breaking Australia contacted Optus for comment.

Until her highly publicized resignation in 2022, Ms Rugg was also chief of staff to independent MP Monique Ryan.

In May, Ms Rugg settled her employment lawsuit against the independent MP and the Commonwealth for $100,000.

Optus’ nationwide failure threw Melbourne’s public transport system into chaos, with Metro Trains revealing the outage prevented the control center from communicating with trains.

Hospitals and emergency services across the country were also affected.

Ramsay Health Care said telephone services to its 70 hospitals and clinics were affected. Triple zero emergency calls did not work from Optus landlines.

The Optus outage was the second major crisis for the telecoms provider in the past 12 months, after a cyber security breach last year compromised the personal data of millions of customers.

On Monday, Optus revealed that the outage was caused by changes to ‘routing information’ following a software upgrade at the telco.

About 10.2 million customers were without internet or mobile access for about 13.5 hours.

Services were lost around 4:05 a.m. and were not fully restored until 5:35 p.m.

In a statement, Optus said its network received “changes to routing information from an international peering network following a routine software upgrade.”

“These changes to routing information propagated through multiple layers in our network and exceeded preset security levels on key routers that could not handle them,” their statement said.

‘This resulted in those routers disconnecting from the Optus IP Core network to protect themselves.’

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin did not speak publicly for several hours on the day of the crisis, calling ABC Radio via WhatsApp shortly after 10.30am for a short interview on the matter.

She faced intense backlash for appearing to go missing during those crucial early hours, but this week she told an inquest she had good reason for the decision.

“Before I spoke, I wanted to make sure we could at least rule out the possibility of malicious activity,” she said.

“Once our cyber specialists ruled this out, I began advocating the issue publicly on behalf of my team.”

The Australian Business Network has reported that Optus could be forced to pay up to $400 million in compensation if it strikes a deal with the regulator.

Thousands of customers have also joined a class action lawsuit against the telecom provider after their personal data was hacked in 2022.

Up to nine million Aussies were affected by the data breach, with their names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses and, for some customers, addresses and ID document numbers such as a driver’s license or passport number exposed.