Angry business owners are threatening to take a class action against Telstra after Harden was left without phone and internet services from the provider for four days.
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The telecommunications chaos started early on Friday, and took Telstra workers until about 10am on Monday to get services back up and running.
Greg Medway from the Australia Agriculture Academy was furious with what he called an “uncaring attitude” from Telstra employees when he tried to find out what was causing the breakdown in communications.
“No indication was given to anyone regarding the shutdown or restart of communications, we basically had to just keep trying to see when and if the system was back up.” Mr Medway said. “It’s just not good enough. If we were in Sydney, the problem would have been fixed in an hour, but because we are a small town, it seems we are insignificant.”
Simon Watts from the Harden Newsagency said his business was severely affected by the outage.
“We take most of our Lotto and Lottery entries on a Friday afternoon and Saturday, but we could not do anything without internet service.” Mr Watts said. “Our regular customers had to travel to Young or Cootamundra to withdraw cash, so of course, they shopped there. That is business we, as a small town, cannot afford to lose.”
Telstra area manager Chris Taylor apologised for the outage, which was caused by a hardware failure.
“We thank our customers for their patience,” Mr Taylor said.
“Our staff live and work across regional and rural Australia and we aim to provide the best possible service no matter where you live.
“Customers are welcome to contact Telstra on 132 200 to discuss their individual situations.”
Mr Medway said he would contact a lawyer to organise the first “whole-town class action” in Australia.
“I am sure there will be a lawyer willing to help us.” Mr Medway said.
“ Any business owner who wishes to discuss the action, can contact me on 0487 028 657.”