Telstra customers impacted by prolonged prepaid system outage

Telstra is experiencing an extended outage of a system that handles activations and recharges for its prepaid services.

The telco acknowledged the issue in a notification but provided no estimate for when the problems might be resolved.

“We are investigating an issue impacting some Telstra prepaid requests,” the telco said in an advisory.

“Customers may experience issues recharging or activating new prepaid services. 

“We are urgently working to resolve the issue. 

“For customers who may be experiencing trouble recharging, we have made some changes so you can continue to use your service as usual.”

Telstra elaborated in social posts late Wednesday evening saying that it had “made a few tweaks to ensure [customers will] still be able to make and receive calls, as well as use the internet regardless of [their] balance.”

This would work to temporarily alleviate issues as customers with dwindling prepaid balances wondered how they could recharge to maintain service.

Some customers reported they were able to pay for a recharge but that this was not reflected in their prepaid balances.

Others were unable to get the prepaid recharge system working at all.

It appears the issues have been present for about two days and that the cause was maintenance work to the system, based on acknowledgements by Telstra on social media.

Update, 4.10pm: A Telstra spokesperson confirmed the issue but said it had been fixed.

"An issue with our prepaid platform meant recharging failed intermittently for some customers yesterday," the spokesperson said.

"We know how important staying connected is, so we ensured prepaid customers were still able to use their phones as they normally would, regardless of their balance, while we fixed the issue. 

"The recharging platform was restored this morning and we thank our customers for their patience. Any customers who happened to make multiple recharges during this period will be contacted and refunded."