AT&T to Offer $5 Credit to Customers Affected by Widespread Outage
AT&T customers who were affected by a widespread outage on Thursday will be receiving a $5 credit as compensation, the company’s chief executive announced on Sunday. The outage, which started around 3:30 a.m. Eastern time, disrupted service for users across the United States, including major cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York.
According to Downdetector.com, the site received about 70,000 reports of disrupted service for AT&T at its peak. The outage lasted for about seven hours before service was fully restored.
In a letter dated Sunday, AT&T’s CEO, John T. Stankey, apologized to customers for the inconvenience caused by the outage. He stated, “No matter the timing, one thing is clear — we let down many of our customers, including many of you and your families. For that, we apologize.”
To make amends, AT&T is offering affected customers a $5 credit on their AT&T Wireless account. The company stated that the credit will be automatically applied to the accounts of the most impacted consumer and small business customers. It may take one to two billing cycles for the credit to appear on customers’ bills.
Prepaid customers who were affected by the outage will also have options available to them, although specific details were not provided in the announcement. AT&T is working closely with Mid-Market and Enterprise customers to address their concerns as well.
AT&T emphasized that the outage was not caused by a cyberattack but was due to technical issues encountered while expanding the network. The $5 credit is intended to refund customers for the day of service that was lost during the outage.
“I believe that crediting those customers for essentially a full day of service is the right thing to do,” Mr. Stankey wrote in his letter.
It was not immediately clear how much the credits would amount to in lost revenue, as a company representative could not be reached for comment on Sunday. Customers can expect to see the credit on their accounts in the coming billing cycles.
