Tens of thousands of Telstra customers have had email problems for more than a month

The outages are impacting users across the nation. Users litany of complaints includes a lack of response from Telstra regarding their issues, to being told the fault was user error, to promises of fixes that never occur.

Concerningly for some, the outages are affecting their ability to do business, maintain contact with health professionals and to keep up with the day to day tasks of their employment.

“No email now for over 18 days” writes a customer. “This is unacceptable. This lack of service is impacting on businesses and individuals…”

“This is just ridiculous I have lost a work contract which was worth $800 to me due to not getting an email booking request and not being able to respond. In these COVID times, every cent counts and  is the difference between being able to pay the rent or not”

Another writes:

“I have been having issues with emails for quite a few weeks now and my job is now on the line.”

Many customers complain of having no email for over a month. with little or no response from Telstra.

Adding insult to injury one Darwin user who is having issues reports calling the Teslktra helpline only to be greeted by a recorded message that says they will send him an email.

“Great way to fix a problem when I cant get emails” he cajoles.

One user worries for her mother whose only connection to people during lockdown is via email; while another reports repeatedly receiving 1000s of emails.

“In the past 3 days I have received over 22,000 old emails dating back 12 months. They just keep coming back if I delete them. When I finally got through to support I was told it’s a know issue and they are trying to resolve it. That was 3 days ago and I’ve heard nothing. Why are these old emails even still on the server? They should have been deleted once deleted from my Inbox, as per my settings. NOT HAPPY”

Telstra’s response to the issue thus far has been a short statement on their website, which does little to placate customers or address their complaints.

A Telstra spokesperson said the telco was aware of the issue and that major repairs had been completed in response, however, traffic rebalancing and other minor works are continuing.

“We have seen considerable improvement in the situation with traffic handling at normal levels, however some slow load times for web pages may still be occurring for some customers,” the spokesperson said.

“We’re working on it and we expect continual improvement to be ongoing and have contacted some customers that are impacted by this issue and will continue to do so as we rebalance traffic and other minor works continue.”

The spokesperson offered Telstra’s “sincere apologies for the frustration this has caused; it’s a complex technical issue to resolve.”

The issue has occurred over an extended period as one of Telstra’s servers has experienced technical issues, causing some customers (around 2%) to be acutely affected.