Verizon has announced that every customer affected by Wednesday’s massive network failure will receive a $20 credit for what the company called a ‘huge inconvenience.’
The telecommunications giant apologized for the roughly 12-hour signal blackout, saying, ‘this credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can.’
While the company’s business customers would be contacted directly to discuss compensation, Verizon said standard phone users would need to redeem the $20 credit by logging into the myVerizon app and applying it to their bill.
While Verizon claimed that the $20 ‘covers multiple days of service,’ the refund has been met by waves of unsatisfied customers online, some adding that the company still hasn’t said what knocked out phone service for an entire day nationwide.
‘How about an explanation as to why the outage occurred in the first place?’ one person on X asked.
‘Why do we need to redeem it? You guys messed up. Apply it to everyone affected automatically,’ one frustrated customer said in a reply to Verizon’s X post.
‘$20 when my bill is $265 HOW THOUGHTFUL,’ another Verizon user added. While one customer posted on X: ‘$20 for an outage is lowkey insulting.’
In a statement to the Daily Mail, a Verizon spokesperson did not reveal if an exact cause for the network blackout has been found or how the company knows which customers were impacted by the seemingly random outage.
Verizon announced that each affected customer would receive a $20 refund that they will need to redeem using the company’s app online
Reaction on social media to the Verizon service outage has been extremely negative, with many claiming the return is not enough for the loss of work and business on Wednesday
Verizon’s announcement did not specify if users who have multiple phones on their account or those with more than one phone plan would receive a refund for each affected device.
‘It should be $20 per line. I have 5 people who were unable to use their phones most of the day,’ one Verizon customer argued.
‘I hope this is per phone in the house. Of course, yesterday would be the day my daughter was injured during sports practice, and she waited hours before my husband and I got the message. Our entire family was without working phones,’ another person claimed.
One X user posted: ‘Verizon is such a joke. They made a post apologizing for customers being without service yesterday and announced a $20 credit available to redeem in the app.’
Meanwhile, many of Verizon’s clients claimed the damage to their incomes on Wednesday exceeded their phone and internet provider’s offer.
‘$20 credit? Are you kidding me? I lost thousands of dollars of business yesterday because of this. This is an insult,’ one worker alleged on X.
Verizon’s statement to Daily Mail also did not estimate how many of its customers were affected by the hours-long disruption or address unproven claims made on social media that the cause of the outage was a cyberattack.
So far, initial investigations by law enforcement agencies and emergency management personnel in cities like New York have found that a single server in New Jersey may be to blame for triggering the nationwide blackout.
James Knight of DigitalWarfare.com told the Daily Mail: ‘There are no credible signs or evidence this was cyberwarfare, a cyberattack, or foreign interference.’
Many Verizon customers complained on Thursday that their monthly phone plans were still too expensive even after the $20 partial refund
Verizon’s network began experiencing a major outage at 12 noon ET on Wednesday, with many customers still reporting service issues on Thursday (Stock Image)
‘The outages are still happening, you fixed nothing,’ an X user claimed Thursday afternoon.
‘Having problems in central Arizona near Casa Grande right now… For whatever reason, the internet works, but the cell service is not working,’ a Verizon customer confirmed on the outage-tracking website Down Detector at 2pm ET.
‘My phone still isn’t working!!! South Carolina. Go straight to voicemail and I can’t dial your 611 either,’ a frustrated user added on social media.
Verizon has said that anyone still having issues with their network connections should restart their devices to solve the problem.
The day-long issues began shortly before 12 noon ET on Wednesday. Within an hour, there were more than 180,000 reports from across the US saying that their mobile phones had gone into SOS mode, meaning they had no connection and could only make emergency calls to 911 and send emergency texts.
