PHARMACIES that don't rely on the Optus network may have weathered the recent outage, however, as one pharmacy has shown when its customers were affected by the outage, it still caused a major disruption to it.
Rosedale Pharmacy found out that a business may be on Telstra and Vodafone, but if their customers use Optus, it can still cause significant upheaval.
Pharmacy assistant at Rosedale Pharmacy, Vic, Deana McQuillen (pictured) told the Gippsland Times last Fri that they were catching up from the day's absolute chaos.
"So we weren't affected business-wise because our internet is with Telstra, but unfortunately our customers who were with Optus couldn't pay for their prescriptions," McQuillen said.
"They couldn't load up a script because doctors send an e-script to their mobile phone...and you have to download it over the internet, and they couldn't even do that because of no service.
"So people were going without their medications and couldn't ring their doctors."
Rosedale Pharmacy staff spent the day of the outage trying to assist by attempting to 'hotspot' Optus-affected customers to the staff members' non-Optus-connected smartphones to use the internet to receive their scripts.
"It was quite bad; we are trying to slowly catch up," she remarked.
"Customers couldn't get their specific or special medicines and had to wait an extra day for it."
McQuillen said the delays and potential losses go further than serving in-store customers.
"I feel for all the businesses in places like Rosedale, Heyfield and the surrounding areas.
"A lot of our customers live in Traralgon, and we do webster packing for patients and delivery.
"We couldn't even contact hospitals to get new prescriptions.
"We couldn't get a hold of our delivery patients and they couldn't get a hold of us, it was a mess."
McQuillen praised Rosedale Pharmacy customers for their cooperation as "they didn't take it out on any of us and were very appreciative of our help".
"It just goes to show, what are we going to do if we end up with a cashless society?"JG
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 22 Nov 23
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