How to get your free $20 refund from Verizon after yesterday’s massive outage

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Many Verizon customers experienced a data outage on Wednesday.
• This prevented users from making phone calls and browsing on cellular networks.
• Verizon is resolving the issue by offering a form of refund to affected customers.

If you suddenly found yourself with no Verizon signal yesterday, you weren’t alone. The Big Red cellular network experienced one of its biggest service outages in the US, with over 2 million reports over the past 24 hours across major cities, including New York City, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Houston.

Also: Is Verizon still down? How to check your local area for outage problems, fixes, and more

Verizon categorized the impact as “Very High”, with a bulk of the complaints being filed as either “mobile phone issues” or “lack of signal.” If you’re one of the many who were affected, you may have noticed your phone defaulting to SOS mode, a common setting when the device no longer has cellular connectivity.

Verizon has resolved the issue

As of last night, Verizon shared the following:

“The outage has been resolved. If customers are still having an issue, we encourage them to restart their devices to reconnect to the network. For those affected, we will provide account credits. Details will be shared directly with customers. We sincerely apologize for the disruption.”

If you’re still experiencing some form of lost signal, you can track the latest service updates in your local area through Verizon’s network status page.

Will I get a refund, discount, or credit for the outage?

Verizon has confirmed that it will offer $20 in account credits to customers affected by Wednesday’s outage, while acknowledging that it needs to do more to make up for the issue. Affected customers can redeem the account credit by logging in to their MyVerizon app and receiving a confirmation text message once it’s available to use. Business users will be contacted directly by Verizon. 

Here’s the full statement from Verizon regarding the matter.

Customer reactions

Commenters on Downdetector expressed frustration toward the Wednesday outage, and for good reason.

One user mistook the lost signal as a sign of them forgetting to pay their bill and getting cut off. Another mentioned the ever-increasing costs of phone bills, particularly with Verizon’s 5G plans. A family attending a concert was unable to display their QR-coded tickets due to a loss of service.

Also: My phone struggled to get signal: These 5 quick fixes instantly improved its reception

One promising IT candidate suggested that Verizon turn its servers off and back on again as an attempt to fix the issue.

(Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by Ziff Davis, the same parent company as ZDNET.)

What does the SOS icon mean?

A couple of readers have reached out to me (Adrian), wondering why a satellite icon and the words SOS suddenly appeared on their iPhones, in the status bar at the top. They’d not seen it before and were worried that their iPhone was making an emergency SOS call, and they could be billed for it or get into trouble.

Weird!

Back in 2022, Apple rolled out Emergency SOS via satellite to a number of countries for the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. At this point, all recent iPhone models, including the 17 series, support the outer space tech.

Also: How I use Samsung’s hidden Wi-Fi menu to seriously upgrade my internet connectivity

If you have one of these handsets and live in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, or the UK, you can test this out by tapping on Settings > Emergency SOS, scrolling to the bottom of the page to Emergency SOS via Satellite and tapping on Try Demo.

But this isn’t what was happening here.

After a bit of back and forth, I came up with a way to replicate this.

• I had to be outside of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage (I had Wi-Fi turned off), either in the wilds or in a building.
• Have a mapping app, such as Google Maps or Waze, running (it may work with other apps, but this is what worked for me).
• Wait! It may or may not pop up.

And there it was!

In the Control Center panel, I can only see a satellite.

I reached out to Apple technical support about this issue, and after having some tests carried out on my iPhone, I was told it’s normal behavior, even though no emergency SOS call is being made and no data can be sent or received over the satellite network (other than when making a genuine emergency SOS call).

I asked if there was a chance that this would cost me money or get me into trouble because my handset was making an SOS satellite call, and I was told there was no danger of that.

Also: Best satellite phones

So, if you see “SOS satellite” appearing on your iPhone, don’t panic. It’s likely happening because you’re out of signal coverage, but you’re not actually making an SOS call, and you won’t get billed or get into trouble.  

As to whether this is a bug or a feature, I’m not sure. Maybe Apple is testing something. Perhaps it’s related to Find My. Perhaps it’s an unusual issue that occurs when running mapping apps.