Telecom and cable companies crediting their customers affected by Hurricane Irma for service outages as well as waiving late fees and extending billing periods.
“As we begin the recovery process, it’s important that consumers not be saddled with late fees and other unnecessary costs—particularly those without the means to deal with such costs,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who requested such measures in a letter to nine Florida companies. Most of the companies have replied to Nelson with plans to address customer needs in some fashion.
For example, AT&T is waiving data overage charges and has extended its payment dates for Florida customers. Verizon is giving an extra three gigabytes of data to prepaid customers, waiving late fees for all subscribers and deploying mobile Verizon stores to areas of the state hit the hardest.
T-Mobile has waived their data, talk and text limits for customers who don’t already subscribe to unlimited plans. Meanwhile, Sprint has waived text, call and data overage fees and will continue to do so through Sept. 22.
Telephone and internet company CenturyLink waived its late fees and is ceasing all collections activities for customers impacted by the storm through Oct. 16. Cox cable is doing the same as it continues to restore service to customers impacted. They’re offering credits on an individual basis.
Meanwhile, Comcast is still struggling to bring large swaths of Florida back online, including large areas of Northeast Florida. As of this week, there were many customers in the Riverside and San Marco neighborhoods of Jacksonville — some of the hardest hit areas on the river and close to downtown — who could neither access neither their own home internet nor the company’s wifi hotspots.
The storm’s lingering debris and flooding has made it difficult for crews to assess and fix the damage.
Service is expected to be restored this week and the company says it will be crediting all affected customer accounts on their next billing cycle.