Verizon is offering $20 in credits following Wednesday’s hours-long outage that reportedly affected more than 2 million customersmaking them unable to use their devices.
In a statement Thursday, a Verizon spokesperson said the credit can be used in the myVerizon app to accept it.
“This credit is not intended to make up for what happened. No credit really can. But it is a way to recognize our customers’ time and show that it matters to us,” the statement read.
If your phone is still having issues connecting to the network, the statement suggests restarting the device to see if that restores the signal.
The outage caused the phones to become stuck in SOS mode. Although the outage slowly began to resolve with some users regaining service on their phones, others said on Fault detector that their phone briefly started working again, then went back into SOS mode. User reports on Downdetector peaked at just over 180,000.
“I heard people were getting service back but couldn’t make calls or do anything, this happened to me here in Tampa, I came back for 3 minutes then immediately went back to SOS,” one commenter wrote. (Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by Ziff Davis, the same parent company as CNET.)
Verizon did not offer a cause for the disruption.
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About seven hours after the outage began, a Verizon spokesperson sent an email to CNET apologizing and promising to provide credits to affected customers.
“Today we have let down many of our customers and we are very sorry for that. They expect more from us,” the spokesperson said. “We are working around the clock and making progress. Our teams will continue to work through the night until service is restored to all affected customers. We will make it right: for any affected customers, we will provide account credits and share updates soon.”
Other carriers, such as AT&T And T-Mobilewere quick to mock their competitor while praising their own services. They each posted on X to note that if their customers’ calls aren’t going through, it’s not a problem on their end, but on Verizon’s.
Outages like this, while rare, can render seemingly obsolete technologies like attractive landlineseven in the age of smartphones.