Supporting small businesses through COVID-19
Many small businesses across Australia are feeling the impacts of COVID-19. Australian small businesses are agile; we’ve always admired that about them, and we’ll see many of them adapt. But it’s important that the rest of Australia also gets behind them to support them through this challenging time. We’re showing our support by helping them adjust in a number of ways.
Navigating financial difficulty
To give you peace of mind about staying connected to your business operations over the coming months, we’re providing unlimited data allowances on fixed broadband free of charge for our small business customers until 30 September.
If you’re a small business and a supplier of ours, we will also make sure we pay your invoices as quickly as we can. We recently announced we’re moving to 20-day payment terms by 30 June for all our suppliers who are small businesses, charities, indigenous organisations and disability enterprises.
Adapt and keep going
Doing business doesn’t look the same for many of us right now, so our aim is to help small businesses through this difficult period by assisting if you need to ramp up your digital presence.
We’re offering small businesses access to our new Digital Marketing Services website plans at half the regular cost, until 31 August. We’ll help you create or update your website and if needed, open an online store. We’ll be on hand to assist you in creating business listings for Google My Business, Apple Maps and Facebook Business. For our existing customers, we will automatically apply 50 per cent off your Telstra Digital Marketing or Telstra Online Essentials website subscription charge.
If you’re missing any equipment to work from home, Telstra’s Mobile Worksuite gives you the data, software, devices and support you need to get you and your team working remotely smoothly.
We continue to monitor the situation closely while working closely with regulators and the government. Our absolute focus remains on team wellbeing, supporting our customers and playing our part in the national response.
Additional support with business hibernation
As we see more and more businesses shutting their doors due to COVID-19 restrictions, we want to play our part in helping small businesses to hibernate and get through this difficult time. We’re offering small businesses with a 10-digit account number who have had to cease trading the option to suspend their fixed business services.
Further details and eligibility can be found on the Telstra website . Eligible customers can take up this offer by logging into Your Telstra Tools and submitting a Service Suspension request.
Once the suspension is applied, customers won’t be charged for their fixed service provided they don’t use it. The service suspension will remain in place until further notice and Telstra will provide customers with 30 days’ notice of when the suspension offer and suspensions will end.
Additionally, customers can also divert their affected fixed business phone service/s to another fixed or mobile service of their choice, regardless of the carrier, at no cost for the period the suspension is active. Once you have applied to suspend your services, you will be sent instructions via your registered email address on how to forward your calls.
Things you need to know:
- Account suspensions will not be backdated.
- Should a customer use their fixed service while it has been suspended, the suspension will be removed, and they will be billed for that month.
- Offer is not available for Telstra mobile services, items purchased on a repayment option and Telstra Business Tech Support or Telstra Business Digital Marketing Services.