It's a slap to those of us with multiple lines. So I, a paying customer of 5 lines get $1 credit per line.
Meanwhile, someone with a single line gets $5 credit. That's the insult here.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
AT&T Giving $5 Credit to Customers Following Major Network Outage
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It's a slap to those of us with multiple lines. So I, a paying customer of 5 lines get $1 credit per line.
Meanwhile, someone with a single line gets $5 credit. That's the insult here.
iCloud is free and an average phone bill is > 10x more than Apple Music. And Apple's outages are usually resolved in minutes.
So if you’re saying one should be compensated based on how much they were actually affected then should those who didn’t notice the outage not get anything? But also how can anyone measure this with any accountability? And if you’re saying one should receive compensation based on how they potentially could have been affected, then the same applies plus then the sky is the limit.
I got $750 and a free phone upgrade. Clearly no one here understands the art of negotiation.
The night we had the outrage, the area I lived had a huge storm so I had assumed the cell phone outage was due to that. Man, it sucked being stuck out in the middle of the night, away from home, without any landline service, power flickering, and SOS cell service that wasn't even caused by the storm.
People complaining about the reimbursement need to get real. Stuff happens, and outages are rare, but they do happen. We should not be expected to be reimbursed for things like outages. After all, we're dealing with electronics, as well as humans who sometimes f up. The reality is, the system works, almost 100% of the time. If you're unhappy with ATT, then switch. There are plenty of alternative services out there for most areas of coverage, if not all.
Last edited:
My post was in response to this:
Electrical power and water service are not paid by the hour or day. Yes, I know the utilities are charged for the amount used. When the system is down, nothing is used, so no charge for the amount used. However, there is a meter charge for both services. If the electrical is out should not a rebate be offered for the meter charge?
I'll chip in here. There was a video on YouTube about a balloon flying over Utah in the Jetstream and the commentators on the video were loosing their minds over it. Lots thought it was some kind of EMP device as completely implausible as that is, because a weather balloon doesn't work when you are in a permanent mental state of living under threat. Perfect excuse. AT&T can just blame the outage on weather balloons from an unknown enemy with unknown technology hanging from it. Drop hints it could be from Huawei. No refunds required.
I believe you have to actually apply for the $5, theyre counting on it being such a small amount no-one is going to do it. plus you'll see rates go up, much like Verizon recently did
$5 (if I actually get it - I was affected but have not heard from AT&T yet) is fine but I'm not happy with any of these telecoms.
A few months ago my landline was out for a week for no apparent reason, and the phone company gave me zilch. The only way I could contact them about the problem was with my cell phone since their website was useless. And then they told me there was no estimate for restoring service. A week later a technician showed up unannounced at my house and said it was fixed.
My parents recently found out that they no longer have any POTS in their neighborhood. These telecoms are abandoning the copper and the state regulators are letting them get away with it. Just offering VOIP. Parents had to get a new security system for their house to work with VOIP.
A few months ago my landline was out for a week for no apparent reason, and the phone company gave me zilch. The only way I could contact them about the problem was with my cell phone since their website was useless. And then they told me there was no estimate for restoring service. A week later a technician showed up unannounced at my house and said it was fixed.
My parents recently found out that they no longer have any POTS in their neighborhood. These telecoms are abandoning the copper and the state regulators are letting them get away with it. Just offering VOIP. Parents had to get a new security system for their house to work with VOIP.
FIVE WHOLE DOLLARS?! so many better ways than that credit.. that will hopefully safe guard them from any lawsuit
$5 and some apology and they can now walk away? Wow US is great.
Optus compensation? 200GB of data…
I hate peoples blindly assuming someone else has the same connectivity as theirs, while ignoring everything else. Such kind of ignorance can only fuel the divide of the US rather than unite the nation. The Optus outage affects so many people, Parliament got involved in. US Congress, instead of doing various pointless things for political gain, should tap into this outage and ask serious questions to AT&T.
Some folks clearly take the modern technology we use today for granted I can tell. It’s not. It’s fragile and delicate. Anything happen, and large chunk of us won’t even have the luxury to login to this forum to recharge their ego or demonstrate superiority over people who are not affected. It is a serious incident and must be treated with utmost attention and scrutiny.
Yeah say the same thing to remote areas, to areas with AT&T as the only cell provider, and to places with no practical wifi solution. Those people who got inconvenienced gonna be feeling grateful when they receive a $5 discount on their next phone bill that is insulting because lost productivity never gets back or even worse.
A couple months ago, Optus in Australia suffered the same scale of outage. The scale is just as devastating, such as Melbourne train network completely shutting down, people working from home cannot be reached, people not working from home cannot contact their colleagues, emergency services paralysed and someone in danger can’t get help they need, businesses shutting down during outage, so on and so forth.
Optus compensation? 200GB of data…
I hate peoples blindly assuming someone else has the same connectivity as theirs, while ignoring everything else. Such kind of ignorance can only fuel the divide of the US rather than unite the nation. The Optus outage affects so many people, Parliament got involved in. US Congress, instead of doing various pointless things for political gain, should tap into this outage and ask serious questions to AT&T.
Some folks clearly take the modern technology we use today for granted I can tell. It’s not. It’s fragile and delicate. Anything happen, and large chunk of us won’t even have the luxury to login to this forum to recharge their ego or demonstrate superiority over people who are not affected. It is a serious incident and must be treated with utmost attention and scrutiny.
I really want to know if AT&T has any backup of any sort whatsoever. My guts tell me they don‘t.
And no, different provider may not be an option.
Owning up? If they truly want to own up, their action should be contacting affected customers individually and offer monetary compensation, such as paying for small businesses portion of lost revenue during affected hours, not “here is $5 credit, we are sorry and have a nice day”.
oh, I mean like, literally the entire industry is a joke. the infrastructure wouldn’t be such **** if verizon & ATT hadn’t collectively spent decades (along with the likes of Comcast and Charter) lobbying for control over every single aspect of it, leaving absolutely no room for people with innovative ideas to enter the space—or, god forbid, create a community-driven network that provides free Internet/telephone access. realistically, not much has changed since Ma Bell was broken up. we just write the checks to companies with different names.
all of that is to say—there is no reason this kind of outage should’ve happened. it’s not unreasonable in the slightest to have that expectation for infrastructure that’s been worked on (sorry, “worked on”) for generations—but there’s a reason it did happen. the people running these companies (let us not forget that all big 3 networks had an outage) are asleep at the wheel because they’re getting paid more money than virtually anyone here could dream of. if you’d like a more nuanced take, with more context than can be given in two paragraphs, I’d recommend reading some of
(oh, and if you’re looking for an answer about the $5—it’s not surprising in the slightest that they’re giving out a pittance to the customers they already price-gouge when their CEO earned $24.8m in 2022. it’s basic american wealth disparity.)
(bonus links for these two companies given I consider them the root of much big telecom evil)
charter spectrum – Techdirt
Posts about charter spectrum written by Karl Bode, conciergecli@a8c.com, and Techdirt
www.techdirt.com
Last edited: