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Across the United States, Verizon Wireless customers are experiencing issues paying their bills online, using their device upgrades and activating new devices. The company has been suffering from a system wide outage for more than a day. Verizon customers attempting to use their online portal, where bills can be paid, are greeted with this error message:

Customers are understandably furious, and have taken to the Internet to complain:

As of publishing time, Twitter complaints were still pouring in about the #VerizonOutage.

Verizon customer service agents aren't taking it too well either. One agent told The Wire she is "exhausted." Another said he stopped counting the number of people who swore at him today after the first three dozen.

On the bright side, Verizon is at least trying to handle this well. If a customer is late paying their bill, they won't be penalized (as well they shouldn't be) and any late fees will automatically be credited back. "We know this is an outage, there are a lot of customers trying to pay their bills," explained one customer care agent, "If you can't get on My Verizon and can't get to a phone to call us, we won't charge you. If somehow you get a late fee, it'll be credited back automatically right away." 

Verizon headquarters seem understanding that their employees are having an extremely rough day, and are giving some of them the day off:

Every agent gave us the same answer when if the outage will be over soon: "There is no estimated time. They are working on it currently. We are very, VERY sorry." 

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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