When you live in a small rural community and something happens that impacts your ability to find information, send messages, engage with tradies, and run a business, the last thing you want to be told when you try to report a problem to your telecommunications provider is that there is no problem.

That’s what faced Geurie residents last month when ongoing Telstra outages impacted internet and some phone services locally.

Dozens of residents and local businesses reached out to Telstra to report problems with their internet, first reported around September 7, which came to a head on Friday, September 18, when an extended outage impacted the community over several days – only to be repeatedly told there was no problem.

Local businesses in Geurie bore the financial brunt during that prolonged outage period, which extended until well into Monday, September 21, unable to trade with EFTPOS terminals requiring Telstra internet access.

Worst impacted was Geurie’s Pistop Garage, an independent fuel supplier, which recorded around 25 instances of people filling their vehicles before realising they couldn’t pay via card and were unable to pay their bill with cash.

All staff member Sunny Kumar could do was take phone numbers and follow up later, hoping people would honour the request to pay.

When Dubbo Photo News spoke to Sunny on Tuesday, September 22, he was still chasing 18 people for payment.

Louise and Adam Cleary are mid-renovation on their property and found their reno impacted by the extended outage.

“Our builder is coordinating different tradies because our kitchen's being ripped out,” Louise explained.

“We also don't have a bathroom, and he's got tilers, plumbers, and sparkies coming so we can get our bathroom back on board after seven weeks, and he can't ring any of them.”

While in Dubbo for an appointment, Adam Cleary found that when he went to collect an order made by their builder that morning, it had not been received.

Local resident Madeleine Cannon just wanted to watch a much-awaited event online, but had no internet to do so. She could send basic text-only SMS messages and make mobile calls, but couldn’t send or receive attachments.

It was Madeleine who reached out to Dubbo Photo News with her frustrations, particularly at the lack of response by Telstra to numerous complaints that she personally made about the outage, as well as other community members who vented on social media.

With many complainants told there was no issue detected at Telstra’s end, a number of residents headed to Dubbo and complained directly to the Telstra shop. Others like Mark Burslem, whose partner works from home and needs internet access, purchased Optus SIM cards to try to get around the issue, while others resorted to Starlink satellite services.

Madeleine said complaint calls to Telstra on weekends were routed to overseas call centres who did not understand local conditions, and follow up calls on weekdays handled within Australia would then find no record of the weekend calls.

A Telstra spokesperson told Dubbo Photo News late on Monday, September 21, that a fault in infrastructure at Geurie had been identified and repaired.

“Our crews have fixed a fault at our Geurie mobile site that was impacting some Telstra services since Friday, [September 18],” the spokesperson said.

“The site stayed online throughout, with calls and texts still working, which is why the fault took longer than we'd like to track down.

“The fault was affecting some customers' ability to use mobile data and access the internet,” the spokesperson added.

“We know how frustrating this has been for the community and we thank locals for their patience while we got to the bottom of it.”

Telstra did not answer questions about whether nearby Mitchell Hwy roadworks or the growing network of renewable energy infrastructure in the region could have contributed to the outages occurring; complaints not being recorded; or the handling of complaints by overseas call centres.

For now, things in Geurie are back to normal but locals are wary. And, if anyone reading this still owes the Geurie Pitstop Garage for fuel taken during the outage that they haven’t paid for, Sunny Kumar would love to hear from them.