At the worst point on Wednesday, Verizon was down nationwide. Millions of customers from West Palm to Orlando found themselves unable to make or receive calls or text messages for as much as seven hours. During the height of the disruption, more than 178,284 – including residential and commercial – customers learned that their services had been severed. By 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Verizon reported that the number of affected customers had decreased to less than 60,000.
Yesterday, Verizon to extend a $20 one-time credit users affected by the outage. This decision is in direct response to the accessibility issues faced by its customers. In making this gesture, the company said it hopes “to offer some relief” during the widespread service disruptions.
Verizon’s technical team stayed closely involved in troubleshooting the issue all day on Friday. A spokesperson confirmed, “is on the ground actively working to fix today’s service issue that is impacting some customers.” In addition, they advised users who were still having problems to reboot their devices to re-establish connections to the network.
Multiple law enforcement agencies have begun investigating whether the outage could be linked to a cyberattack, although no evidence has been publicly presented to confirm this theory. New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) issued a reminder for individuals facing emergencies during the outage, stating, “If you have an emergency and cannot connect using your Verizon Wireless device, please call using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police precinct or fire station to report the emergency.”
On Thursday morning, Verizon responded with a press statement ranking Wednesday’s events. We applaud the company’s recognition that it fell short of customer expectations in this incident. “Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence our customers expect and that we expect ourselves,” they said.
Verizon intends to aggressively pursue solutions to prevent similar issues after the outage. They promised their buyers that reliability will come as they get their service back on track.
“This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging our customers’ time and showing that this matters to us,” – Verizon
