Verizon Offers $20 Bill Credit After Massive Outage | Here’s How to Claim It

If you’re a Verizon customer, you’re probably already well aware of how the carrier left you hanging without service for nearly 10 hours yesterday during a nationwide outage.

It was one of the biggest carrier failures we’ve seen in recent years, with over 180,000 customers reporting problems on Downdetector, and likely an even greater number of users unable to do so because they couldn’t reach the internet. During the outage, affected Verizon customers — which, as far as we can tell, was nearly all of them — couldn’t make phone calls, send text messages, or use data of 5G or LTE. Many saw their iPhones revert to showing simply “SOS” in the status bar, indicating that, while other 5G/LTE networks were available for emergency calls, the Verizon network was not.

While Verizon quickly posted on X that it was aware of the problem, suggesting only “some customers” were affected, we’ve had a hard time finding any Verizon customers who weren’t, and several industry reports suggest that number peaked at over 2 million. Of course, people are more likely to take to social media to complain than report that everything is working just fine, but there’s no denying that this was a big one.

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The carrier managed to resolve the issue late last night, adding that any customers still affected should restart their devices to reconnect, and promising to “provide account credits” to those affected. The carrier has since confirmed the chaos was caused by a software issue, though it has yet to go into detail about what exactly went wrong.

Initially, it simply said that it would communicate this directly with those customers, but this morning the company shared the details on X, once again apologizing for the outage and offering up $20 “that can be easily redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app.”

Verizon adds that this amount should cover “multiple days of service” on average. That’s probably a fair statement for a single-line customer, but since it’s an “account” credit, it may not cut it for those who saw their whole families cut off. It’s also less clear what it’s doing for business customers, as the announcement says only that they’ll be contacted directly. After all, for a family of four on a shared plan, this works out to just $5 per person for 10 hours of total disconnection.

While not everyone is satisfied with the gesture, we’ll credit Verizon for at least conceding that it’s merely a token acknowledgement rather than a way of compensating customers.

However, as with many such offers, the $20 credit isn’t being automatically applied to those affected — and that’s the part that many customers are taking umbrage with. It also doesn’t help that the company’s tweet doesn’t provide any specific instructions on how this works, saying the credit is “easily redeemed” in one breath while telling customers to wait for a text message in the very next one.

Essentially, Verizon is telling its customers to “hurry up and wait” for more information, without giving any indication when that may be forthcoming. The process seems to be fairly straightforward, but it has to be initiated on Verizon’s end:

1. Wait for a text message from Verizon that the credit is available.
2. Follow the instructions in the text to open the myVerizon app.
3. Follow a set of instructions in the app to redeem the credit.
   

We’d also recommend checking the “Verizon Up” section of the app, as some customers are reporting the credit appearing there even before they’ve received a text message.

Since this is an account-level credit, the text message will likely be sent only to the primary account holder, and that’s the person who will need to redeem the credit in the myVerizon app. To be clear, this also means you’ll only be getting a single $20 credit regardless of how many lines you’re paying for.

Sadly, it would be much better — and much safer for its customers — if Verizon simply applied this credit automatically. A cynical but not entirely unfair take is that the company is hoping many folks will miss the text messages or forget to redeem their credit, saving it the trouble of paying out.

Verizon’s choice to do this by text message puts many of its customers at risk of phishing attacks. Since the credit can only be redeemed by logging into the myVerizon app, we expect that any text message will direct users to do this manually rather than providing a link.

This means Verizon customers should be very wary of any text message claiming to from Verizon that include any links or requests for personal information. These are almost certain to be phishing attacks.

Be aware and warn your friends and family as these will undoubtedly ramp up over the next few days as scammers realize that thousands of Verizon customers are eagerly awaiting a text to claim their $20, making them ripe for the picking.