Verizon’s nationwide outage believed to have left hundreds of thousands of subscribers without service for hours on Wednesday has prompted calls from lawmakers for mandatory automatic refunds after the company’s $20 account credit was slammed for being inadequate.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján told the financial news site MarketWatch that he is working on federal legislation that would require pro-rated refunds by law.
“If you pay for a service, that’s what you should be getting,” said the New Mexico Democrat.
In New York, Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, a Manhattan Dem, has already sponsored a bill that would require automatic outage-related refunds, saying consumers shouldn’t have to “beg for it.”
She argued that outages are more serious than ever because “your whole life is on the phone.”
Outage-tracking site Downdetector reported that more than 1.5 million Verizon customers experienced wireless and data outages on Wednesday. The telecom giant ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the problem, blaming it on a software issue on Thursday.
Verizon said the credit was intended to “help provide some relief” and claimed it “covers multiple days of service,” while stressing that the payment was largely symbolic.
“This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened,” Verizon said. “No credit really can.”
That explanation did little to calm customers who said they were left without reliable service for hours, with phones stuck in SOS mode and some users reporting they were unable to reach 911 during emergencies.
“That’s it?? I rather cancel service after 25 years,” entrepreneur Deondre Moore wrote on X.
Another customer said the outage had real financial consequences, writing: “$20 credit? Are you kidding me? I lost thousands of dollars of business yesterday because of this. This is an insult.”
Others echoed that frustration, with one user arguing that “$20 is crazy for a day with no service,” adding that Verizon “should be paying people’s bills for the month.” Another summed up the mood more bluntly: “You must be joking. $20?! Pathetic.”
The outage began Wednesday afternoon and stretched into the night, with hundreds of thousands of customers experiencing problems at its peak. The heaviest concentration of issues was reported in New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte and Houston.
“[W]ow $20? the business owners who lost out on work will surely find this compensation acceptable,” one Reddit user sarcastically wrote.
The Post has sought comment from Verizon.
