Customers Insulted by AT&T's "Make It Right" Credit After Outage

Lafayette, LA (KPEL News) - The cell phone outage across Louisiana and other states on Thursday caused headaches for users who scrambled to find a way to communicate with one another. Discovering the WiFi workaround helped, until you weren't able to access WiFi and were plunged back into cell service oblivion. AT&T admitted that a network glitch caused customers of the nation's largest provider to lose service, and they have announced how they are "making it right."

The following email arrived in AT&T customer's email boxes late Saturday:

We apologize for Thursday’s network outage. We recognize the frustration this outage has caused and know we let many of our customers down. We understand this may have impacted their ability to connect with family, friends, and others. Small business owners may have been impacted, potentially disrupting an essential way they connect with customers.

To help make it right, we’re reaching out to potentially impacted customers and we’re automatically applying a credit to their accounts. We want to reassure our customers of our commitment to reliably connect them – anytime and anywhere. We're crediting them for the average cost of a full day of service.

We’re also taking steps to prevent this from happening again in the future. Our priority is to continuously improve and be sure our customers stay connected.

The "average cost of a full day of service," according to the email, equates to a $5 credit for eligible customers. You'll see it hit accounts within 2 billing cycles. However, it won't apply to AT&T Business, Prepaid, or Cricket customers.

Social media began reacting almost immediately, calling the single-digit credit an insult. Several users cited loss of business due to lack of communication, and a serious hit to productivity for people who rely on cell service for profitability.

More that 73,000 AT&T customers were without service for roughly 8 to 12 hours, at least, Thursday. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Federal Communications Commission are investigating the outage, especially because the emergency call system, FirstNet, was also impacted, preventing the transmission of 911 calls.

Neither AT&T nor federal officials believe it was a cyber attack.