AT&T credits customer $52.50 for Thursday's fiasco; you can ask for a credit too

In the aftermath of Thursday's massive outage, which AT&T said was caused by "the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack." AT&T subscribers could be in line to receive a rebate over the incident. To recap what happened, Thursday morning AT&T and the MVNOs that rely on the AT&T network were down. Subscribers could not make or take calls or send texts. 

When customers of the other majors and non-AT&T MVNOs tried to call their friends, family members, and co-workers on AT&T, they could not get through which led these customers to incorrectly report to DownDetector that their wireless firm was down. So when many on the East Coast woke up Thursday morning, it seemed like the entire U.S. wireless industry was out even though it was only AT&T that was experiencing an outage among the majors.

Besides wondering when the outage would end, AT&T subscribers on social media platforms had discussions contemplating whether they would be receiving credit because of the way they were inconvenienced when AT&T and its MVNOs went down. On Reddit, one AT&T customer tried to guess what the answer might be if he asked the carrier to credit him for the network's downtime on Thursday.

"I know the answer is going to be 'LOL...Yeah, good luck with that' but AT&T needs to seriously consider the impact that this outage has had on customers & at least offer a credit on the February statement. Even if it is a 1/29 (3%) discount for the one day we were down, assuming they can get it back up today, we are paying for a service we are not getting," said a Redditor.

On "X," a sprinter named K.Mickens tweeted, "A national outage not crazy ?! AT&T better give us a credit next month." USA Today asked AT&T on Thursday and Friday whether it would provide a credit or rebate to subscribers and on both days, a spokesman would not discuss this issue. However, at least one AT&T subscriber with the user name "ZillaLady" said on "X" that her account was being credited $52.50 because of the outage. Her tweet ends with the words, "Never hurts to ask" which suggests that she did.

If you're an AT&T subscriber, it doesn't hurt to call the carrier and ask for a credit. The worst thing they could say is "no." Let us know what happens if you request a credit from AT&T by  telling us your story in the comments section.