<\/p>\n
Optus admitted to engaging in unconscionable conduct. (ABC News: Christopher Gillette)<\/p>\n
The legal action is also expected to determine orders of compensation for hundreds of vulnerable and disadvantaged customers nationally.<\/p>\n
In a statement of agreed facts, ACCC senior counsel Thomas Duggan KC referenced 24 customers as examples, including a woman referred to as “consumer five”, who was sold seven contracts at two Optus stores in South Australia.<\/p>\n
“Consumer five is a person living with an intellectual disability,” he said.<\/p>\n
“[She had] a limited understanding of money and written documents, low vocabulary and literacy.”<\/p>\n
He told the court consumer five was receiving a disability pension and sometimes engaged in casual work.<\/p>\n
He said staff “input false information on credit checks”, resulting in “credit check failure”.<\/p>\n
The woman’s parents complained to Optus in 2021 but were told by telco staff “there was nothing they could do” and their daughter “had to pay her bills”.<\/p>\n
The debts amassed more than $6,000 and were later cleared.<\/p>\n
“Every one of these examples has different situations, but Optus now accepts the conduct in relation to consumer five was unconscionable and we say, obviously so,” Mr Duggan said.<\/p>\n
‘Resistance’ over complaint<\/p>\n
The ACCC also revealed details about “consumer seven”, a man who Mr Duggan described as “homeless, lived with deafness, was mute and had parts of his fingers and hand amputated”.<\/p>\n
The man, who recently passed away, had limited use of technology and was living on a disability payment.<\/p>\n
Mr Duggan told the court staff at Optus’s Marion Store in South Australia sold the man two phones, three phone plans and two accessory bundles, with a total full-term contract amounting to $7,542.<\/p>\n
“At no point before signing did Optus staff explain the terms in a manner [he] would be capable of understanding,” he said.<\/p>\n
The man’s support coordinator complained, only to be told by the telco that it could not progress the complaint without power of attorney.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘Pattern of behaviours’<\/p>\n
The court heard incidents at Optus’s Darwin stores constituted a “pattern of behaviours” whereby staff taught or directed junior employees to engage in inappropriate selling conduct.<\/p>\n
Mr Duggan said an initial internal review by Optus revealed 17 staff sold phones and services to at least 70 customers who did not have Optus coverage at their home address.<\/p>\n
As of February 2024, Mr Duggan said there were 564 customers who had since been deemed to have been impacted or potentially impacted by the misconduct.<\/p>\n
Mr Duggan said many customers were First Nations consumers from remote communities across the Northern Territory.<\/p>\n
“Optus had the knowledge of credit check failures, sale of accessory, false ABN, debt collection activity, existence of vulnerable consumers and coverage checks,” he said<\/p>\n
“We regard the conduct in relation to Darwin as the most serious.”<\/p>\n
Mount Isa investigation<\/p>\n
The ACCC detailed similar conduct by Optus staff at its Mount Isa store in Queensland in 2019.<\/p>\n
The watchdog’s junior counsel, Timothy Goodwin, said staff fraudulently completed 82 contracts with 42 customers without consumer knowledge.<\/p>\n
“In February 2020, Optus commenced debt collector activity against 42 consumers \u2026 [and] referred outstanding debt to third-party debt collection agencies,” Mr Goodwin said.<\/p>\n
One of those consumers received more than 100 calls from a third-party debt collector, while another was negatively impacted when trying to purchase a car, the court heard.<\/p>\n
Optus apologises<\/p>\n
Optus representatives also spoke in court about the incidents.<\/p>\n
Optus senior counsel Steven Finch said the telco had taken extensive remediation steps, including repayments to customers and voluntary payments made without legal obligations.<\/p>\n
“Optus sincerely apologises to all customers,” Mr Finch said.<\/p>\n
“It should’ve acted more quickly when this conduct occurred.”<\/p>\n
Mr Finch said the telecommunication company would donate $1 million to an organisation that supported the digital literacy of First Nations Australians.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The matter was presided over by Federal Court Justice Patrick O’Sullivan. (Supplied: Federal Court of Australia)<\/p>\n
In determining the proposed $100m penalty, Justice O’Sullivan said “great weight should be given to the parties agreed range”.<\/p>\n
The hearing has been adjourned until a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Federal Court has heard how people across Australia who were homeless, unemployed or on a disability pension…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11275,3443,64,63,99,13149,80875,70,36987,52893,16609,80876,80874],"class_list":["post-113468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-accc","tag-adelaide","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-contracts","tag-debt-collectors","tag-federal-court","tag-fine","tag-misconduct","tag-optus","tag-unconscionable-conduct","tag-vulnerable-customers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}