Verizon offered a paltry $20 credit to customers who experienced hours-long outages Wednesday — with the “pathetic” handout prompting even more outrage over the massive disruption.
The telecoms giant said on X that the credit was to “help provide some relief” to affected users, claiming the refund “covers multiple days of service.”
“This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened,” Verizon wrote.
“No credit really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us.”
“We are sorry for what you experienced and will continue to work hard day and night to provide the outstanding network and service that you expect from Verizon,” the company added.
But customers didn’t find the incoming credit generous enough, considering phones were stuck in SOS mode and useless for hours — with some reports indicating people couldn’t reach 911.
“That’s it?? I rather cancel service after 25 years,” entrepreneur Deondre Moore wrote on X.
Another user claimed to have lost thousands of dollars in business because of the outage.
“$20 credit? Are you kidding me? I lost thousands of dollars of business yesterday because of this. This is an insult,” he posted online.
“$20 is crazy for a day with no service,” another user argued, “you guys should be paying people’s bills for the month.”
Another user chimed in, “You must be joking. $20?! Pathetic.”
The outage began Wednesday afternoon and dragged into the night with more than 178,000 customers unable to text or make calls.
A large chunk of the issues were centered in New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte and Houston.
Tulane University School of Medicine student Omar MK Ahmad said a light caught fire Wednesday and his family couldn’t call 911 due to the outage.
“Thankfully our cleaners happened to be at the house (who have @TMobile) and called 911,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Verizon’s lack of explanation as to the cause of this outage after 7 hours is unacceptable.”
Federal and local officials looking into the outage are leaning toward a suspected server failure in New Jersey as the cause.
