Legacy phone company AT&T has introduced a customer guarantee feature, promising that if cellphone users lose service for more than an hour, or internet connection for more than 20 minutes, the company will refund the cost of a day’s service.
AT&T estimates this will cost the company $750 million over four years.
The guarantee is offered to both residential consumers and small businesses.
For covered outages, customers will automatically receive a bill credit equal to one day’s service. Customers can also claim reward cards if a call to tech support results in a long wait time or a failed callback.
The guarantee does not cover issues that result from bad weather or natural disasters, or “outages caused by third parties,” according to the fine print.
“We’ve been on a multi-year journey to improve the customer experience, placing our customers at the heart of everything we do,” said Jenifer Robertson, executive vice president of AT&T Mass Markets & Mobility. “We’re committed to raising the bar in the industry.”
AT&T customers experienced multiple outages over the last year, including one in February that affected more than 90 million devices and lasted some 12 hours.
