Verizon To Offer Credits After Major PA Outage: What To Know, How To Get It

Verizon said the company plans to “make it right” with millions of customers, including many in Pennsylvania, who were unable to use their phones for most of the day Wednesday due to a massive outage.

The company acknowledged the inconvenience the outage caused to more than 1.5 million customers who were unable to make calls and send or receive text messages for about 10 hours Wednesday. Their phones displayed “SOS" only.

The company said in a statement that customers affected in the outage will get a credit on their bills. “Details will be shared directly with customers,” Verizon said. “We sincerely apologize for the disruption.”

The company followed up by clarifying impacting customers will receive $20. Customers need to redeem the credit by logging into the myVerizon app." You will receive a text message when the credit is available. On average, this covers multiple days of service. Business customers will be contacted directly about their credits," Verizon said via X.

Customers who are still experiencing an outage are advised to restart their device. "This is the fastest way to reconnect your phone to the network," Verizon said.

Verizon customers across Pennsylvania experienced extensive disruptions to their wireless voice and data services Wednesday afternoon. Residents reported on Downdetector, a website that collects user-submitted reports of outages, that they were without service for several hours.

Verizon didn’t say what caused the outage, but said there was no indication of a cyberattack.

On a Downdetector chat thread for the Philadelphia region, many residents said outages lasted several hours. Outages were logged from Center City to Bucks County, according to the thread.

"Not able to send or receive text from other Verizon customers in 19130 at 1:08pm.," one user reported. 19130 is a Philadelphia ZIP code.

"I've been stuck in SOS mode all afternoon since about 1:00 PM EST," another frustrated Verizon customer in the Philadelphia region shared. Their specific location was not reported.

Verizon updated customers throughout the day as its engineers worked to correct the outage, which the internet monitoring company Cisco ThousandEyes told USA Today was “one of the most significant connectivity interruptions in recent memory.”

"Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are truly sorry. They expect more from us," the company said in one message on X. “We will make this right.”

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr told Reuters after a congressional hearing Wednesday that the agency will review the outage “and take appropriate action.”