Last week, a huge cellular outage swept the U.S., with customers of some of the biggest carriers stuck with iPhones in SOS mode (No Service on older devices). But there’s some good news — if you were affected, you may be eligible for compensation.
Many AT&T customers could not make calls or texts for an extended period on Thursday. Now, AT&T has announced that impacted customers will receive a $5 bill credit per account and that they should expect the credit within the next two billing cycles.
A statement on the company’s website reads, “We apologize for Thursday’s network outage. We recognize the frustration this outage has caused and know we let many of our customers down. We understand this may have impacted their ability to connect with family, friends, and others. Small business owners may have been impacted, potentially disrupting an essential way they connect with customers.
To help make it right, we’re reaching out to potentially impacted customers and we’re proactively applying a credit* to their accounts. We want to reassure our customers of our commitment to reliably connect them – anytime and anywhere. We're crediting them for the average cost of a full day of service.”
Those affected with an AT&T Business account, prepaid account, or with AT&T’s sister brand Cricket, are not entitled to this compensation, although the company told CNET, that those users will “have options available to them if they were potentially impacted by the outage."
If you are concerned about your privacy and data from the outage, rest assured you have nothing to worry about. AT&T claims the initial outage was caused by the “execution of an incorrect process used while working to expand our network, not a cyber attack.”
The company adds, “We have not seen any evidence and have no reason to believe the Feb. 22 outage involved a third-party or that customer data was compromised during the event.”
Measly compensation
The compensation available to those affected by Thursday’s outage appears to be fairly limited. Let’s be honest: $5 might not even get you a cup of coffee anymore in most major U.S. cities. The $5 credit is also only per wireless account, not per line, so if you own multiple devices under the same account that were all offline for a large portion of Thursday, you’re only getting $5.
If you’re not satisfied with AT&T’s offering, the best thing you can do is reach out via phone to the provider and request further compensation. AT&T’s spokesperson told CNET, “if someone needs to talk to us about their situation, our call centers are available."
Somehow, this doesn’t seem like the end of this story, considering the impact the outages caused on Thursday. Stay Tuned to iMore for further information.
