Verizon offers customers a $20 credit after Wednesday’s widespread outage

Verizon on Thursday said it’s offering a $20 credit to customers affected by a widespread service outage on Wednesday. 

Verizon subscribers complained that the outage limited their ability to use their mobile devices, preventing them from making calls or completing online transactions that require a wireless network.

To appease frustrated subscribers, the wireless provider said it’s giving those customers a $20 credit.

“Yesterday, we did not meet the standard of excellence our customers expect and that we expect of ourselves,” Verizon said in a statement to CBS News. “To help provide some relief to those affected, we are giving customers a $20 account credit that can be easily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app to accept. On average, this covers multiple days of service. Our business customers will be contacted directly about their credits.”

Verizon added that the “credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can. But it’s a way of acknowledging our customers’ time and showing that this matters to us.”

The cause of the outage remains unclear. In a statement provided Thursday night, a Verizon spokesperson described it as a “software issue” and said the company was “conducting a full review of what happened.”  

The company said that while the outage has been resolved, customers who continue to experience issues should restart their devices to reconnect to the network. 

Verizon did not indicate how many customers were affected, but Downdetector, which tracks such outages, showed that up to 180,000 users across the U.S. reported issues with the mobile network on Wednesday.