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Verizon To Offer Credits After Major VA Outage: What To Know, How To Get It
More than 1.5 million customers were unable to make calls and send or receive text messages for about 10 hours Wednesday, Verizon said.
Verizon said the company plans to “make it right” with millions of customers, including many in Maryland, by offering them a $20 bill credit after they were unable to use their phones for most of the day due to a massive outage Wednesday.
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 by the outage will receive the $20 credit, which can be redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app. Customers will receive a text message when the credit is available.
Find out what's happening in Old Town Alexandriafor free with the latest updates from Patch.
"This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can," Verizon said. "But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us."
Verizon didn’t say what caused the outage, but said there was no indication of a cyberattack.
Find out what's happening in Old Town Alexandriafor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Verizon first confirmed the outage around 1 p.m. Wednesday, stating the company was aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. The outage caused some service disruptions in Northern Virginia and D.C., including placing calls to 911.
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.”
Verizon said if customers are still having trouble connecting, they should restart their devices (power down and power back on).
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