Optus has replaced Woolworths as the most distrusted brand in Australia in the 12 months to March, according to data from Roy Morgan Risk Monitor.
The research surveys 1500-2000 Australians each month to measure levels of trust and distrust across brands and industries.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine said this was the first time since September 2024 that Optus had returned to the position. The change follows the fatal Triple Zero outage in September last year and highlights how operational failures can have a lasting impact on customer trust.
Facebook and Temu remained among the most distrusted brands, while Woolworths and Coles continued to rank near the top despite improving from the previous quarter.
At the other end of the scale, Bunnings retained its position as Australia’s most trusted brand for a tenth consecutive quarter, ahead of Aldi and Kmart.
At the industry level, telecommunications remained at the bottom of the trust rankings. Video-sharing and social media ranked second, reflecting the performance of Facebook, X and TikTok.
Retail remained the most trusted sector, while banking and supermarket operators recorded gains in trust rankings over the past nine months.
The report also found that AI companies are recording higher levels of consumer distrust. OpenAI, including ChatGPT, fell seven places and entered the top 20 most distrusted brands in Australia for the first time, ranking 19th.
Google continued to decline and ranked 15th on the list. Chipmaker Nvidia also recorded higher levels of distrust, driven by concerns about ethics and anti-competitive behaviour.
According to Roy Morgan, concerns about privacy, ethics and profit motives were among the main factors behind the trend.
The findings come as the use of AI tools continues to expand. Google Gemini is estimated to have around five million users in Australia, while ChatGPT is used by about 10.5 million people.
Levine said high usage does not necessarily translate into higher trust, with concerns around privacy, ethics and profit motives continuing to influence perceptions of technology companies.
