AT&T Logo (Photo: att.com)
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) -- Thousands of angry AT&T customers don't have service to digital TV, phone, or internet.
Big Mouth Burgers in Bryant relies on U-verse to run its credit cards. The business owner said she had to turn away customers, potentially losing $4,600 in profit.
"We had people telling us we need to go back to the old slide system. Hopefully, this will not be an ongoing problem," said Kelly Justus, owner of Big Mouth Burgers.
AT&T released a statement:
"AT&T customers in some of our markets are experiencing issues with U-verse service. This issue currently affects less than 1 percent of our U-verse subscribers, but that is too many and we are working hard to fix this. We are making progress in resolving the issue which is related to a server complex, and are working to determine when service will be completely restored. We apologize for this inconvenience."
According to AT&T, the length of this outage is very unusual, and they found out that the outage is related to a software upgrade. Spokeswoman Anita Smith claimed the company has made solid progress since the outage began, and the company continues to work on resolving the problem.
Some home owners like Marika Ingram also rely on the phone service to activate their security system
"You have a cell phone, but you have that extra added security in knowing when an alarm goes off that operator knows and can dispatch a police officer," said Ingram.
Ingram is one of the 74,000 customers in Arkansas and surrounding states AT&T claims is experiencing problems. Ingram tried calling customer service.
"Just been on hold for an hour and trying to get through," said Ingram who never was able to speak to a real person.
Ingram had her service restored Wednesday after nearly three days of spotty service.
Justus eventually downloaded an app that can take credit cards, but it was after Wednesday's lunch rush. As of Wednesday evening, Justus still did not have U-verse.