Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Verizon Service Outage And The Need For The FCC To Mandate That Companies Compensate Customers For Service Disruptions

Washington, D.C. - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) today spoke on the Senate floor on yesterday's Verizon service outage which impacted over 100,000 customers, and the need for companies to always compensate customers in the event that such a situation occurs. Leader Schumer also emphasized his previous efforts to urge the FCC to mandate that customers be automatically compensated for service disruptions. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Yesterday, more than 100,000 Verizon users experienced outages and disruptions to their cell service for roughly 10 hours. Obviously, this caused real confusion and disruption for many Americans relying on service for work, emergencies, and other things.

It's encouraging that Verizon has said it will give account credits to customers affected by the outage, but this raises a very serious point: at a time of high costs, consumers must always be automatically compensated for service disruptions, fully and completely.

Last month, I led Senate Democrats in urging Chairman Carr of the FCC to ensure that when outages happen, customers are automatically compensated.

Full compensation to customers for service disruptions should be mandated - not just a courtesy, not just a suggestion, not just when the company decides to do it it's okay, when they decide not to do it it's okay, too, because that's wrong.

And again, at a time when Americans want lower costs, automatic refunds when disruptions occur should be the norm for all telecommunication companies, and the FCC has a responsibility to require just that.

Americans already facing high costs shouldn't be the ones paying the price for service disruptions, and the FCC must ensure that that occurs.

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