Verizon’s had a tough 24 hours. A lengthy service outage started in the afternoon yesterday (January 14) and left customers with phones in SOS emergency mode for approximately 10 hours. According to Downdetector, the disruption peaked at around 12:45 E.T. and Verizon officially stated at 10:15 pm E.T. that the outage was resolved.
There’s still an ongoing investigation around the cause of the disruption, but Verizon is moving forward with a pledge to offer a $20 credit to customers that can be redeemed through the myVerizon app. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless business customers will be contacted separately about their credits.
“This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened," Verizon said in a posted response to the outage. "No credit really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging our customers' time and showing that this matters to us.”
Here’s how to redeem your credit if you're a Verizon customer.
Getting the $20 credit requires customers to log into the myVerizon app and accept the refund. But based on this Reddit thread, the credit offer hasn’t yet appeared for many. In fact, there hasn’t been confirmation that anyone’s received it just yet, but we suspect it’ll be a matter of time. We recommend checking back on the app and looking out for any notifications.
A Verizon spokesperson told Tom's Guide that "we will text customers when the credit is available."
Interestingly, Verizon’s $20 credit offer is a direct contrast to its previous major outage in October 2024 that saw more than 100,000 reports on Downdetector. That’s because there were no credits given out for that outage, so for Verizon to willingly offer one this time indicates significant shift to its response for these crisis events.
This kind of gesture is unprecedented, especially compared to the response from rivals AT&T and T-Mobile with their respective outages. What do you think? Is Verizon’s $20 credit enough? Let us know what you think and if you’ve actually received it.
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