AT&T will be providing $5 bill credits to customers to compensate for the inconvenience of its huge February 22 service outage. As if the amount wasn’t low enough, AT&T will only pay out the $5 on a per-account basis, not a per-line basis.
On February 22, AT&T customers were hit with an outage of the AT&T cellular network across the United States.
In a Saturday announcement, AT&T confirmed it will compensate affected customers. However, it turns out that the compensation will be a single $5, even for customers with multiple lines on their account.
AT&T’s “Make it Right” page apologizes for the outage, stating that the carrier is “proactively applying a credit” to accounts. The credit is claimed to be the “average cost of a full day of service.”
If you read the small print, you’ll see that the compensation will be “One $5 credit per account” to AT&T Wireless users. While this is fair when applied to accounts with one line, customers with multiple lines will receive just the single $5 addition.
The bill credits will be applied within two bill cycles, with most applied to AT&T customers’ next billing cycle.
Not everyone will get a credit. Cricket and AT&T Prepaid will not receive the $5 reimbursement, nor will AT&T Business customers. However, the carrier says it will be working with Business customers on the issue.
AT&T says the outage was due to “the application and execution of an incorrect process used while working to expand our network, not a cyber attack.” The carrier says there is no evidence of a third party causing the outage, and says customer data was not accessed during the event.
