The fallout from Optus’ catastrophic outage has worsened for Kelly Bayer Rosmarin after her comments about a hairdresser affected by the outage backfired.
More than 400,000 businesses were affected for 12 hours by the nationwide service outage Wednesday, which cut internet and phone service for customers of the nation’s second-largest telecommunications company.
North Sydney Barbers manager Jake Azar was forced to turn away customers and close his business before lunchtime, a heartbreaking decision that cost him hundreds of dollars.
To make matters worse, cunning customers took advantage of the EFTPOS outage by saying they were going to the ATM to get cash to pay – but never returned.
In a media appearance, Ms Bayer Rosmarin was disconcerted to learn that the massive outage had impacted a hair salon’s ability to perform haircuts.
The director of North Sydney Barbers (pictured) has hit back at comments made about his business by Optus boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.
“I’m disappointed that a hairdresser can’t do a haircut today,” she said Nine news Wednesday.
“It seems like one of the few things you can do without connectivity.”
The comments about his company angered Mr Azar, who felt like he had been thrown under the bus by the Optus boss.
He has since issued a scathing response.
“If she does her job, I can do my job. But I can’t do my job if she can’t do it,” Mr. Azar said. news com.au.
“I kind of laughed at what she said, but she needs to take more responsibility.
“If I get a bad haircut, I have to own it and fix it. If I can do that, she can do it on her own instead of recruiting clients.
Mr Azar is now considering switching phone providers and signing up with Telstra following the latest debacle, just a year after Optus customers were hit by the data leak scandal.
Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was surprised to learn a hairdresser couldn’t give a haircut on Wednesday
North Sydney Barbers manager Jake Azar (pictured) was forced to turn away customers and close his business at midday on Wednesday due to the Optus outage.
Small Business Association of Australia chief executive Anne Nalder slammed Ms Bayer Rosmarin’s comments as out of touch with reality.
“How can you say that’s all you’re going to get if you’ve lost your staff salaries and there’s no productivity? This will show you how disconnected she is from the real world. Any CEO saying that should be fired,” she said.
Other Australians took part in the furor after watching the Nine News interview.
“How was the hairdresser supposed to get paid to provide these haircuts when the network was down? » commented a viewer.
Another added: “She’s humiliating the barber? Can it do work without connectivity? So she’s suggesting he not get paid? Did you think we were going cashless?
A third wrote:
One business owner fumed: “Is this a fucking joke? Did she just laugh by depriving a small business owner of trying to survive and probably feed his family. This goes beyond a joke. This is more than just firing her, she needs to be locked up.
It comes as Optus announced it would not provide financial compensation to customers. They will, however, receive 200 gigabytes of additional data, which can only be used on weekends and must be activated by the end of the year.
“At the end of the day, we wish we could have done something different today and we know there is nothing we can do to make up for that,” Ms Bayer Rosmarin said.
“So we hope our customers appreciate that we really tried to do something valuable for them.”
The cause of the outage was a technical problem.
Fallout from massive outage continues from Optus 48 hours later
Around 400,000 businesses were affected by the Optus outage, including this Adelaide cafe that could only conduct cash transactions.
