If an operator suffers a critical outage, should they refund customers?

On the 28th of March, T-Mobile Netherlands suffered a catastrophic network outage that resulted in millions of users having their phones transformed from communications devices into paperweights. From what I’ve been told, connectivity was offline for most of the business day.

T-Mobile is refusing to offer any compensation citing ‘Force Majeure’.

Now then — should customers get a refund? Or some free text messages? Or, if you’re on a €40 per month contract, should you get €1.30 (i.e. one day’s fee) credited?

Or since these kinds of interruptions are few and far between, should users just suck it up?

I think some type of response is useful, especially if it’s a catastrophic outage that prevents people from doing business. You could even credit everyone 100 free text messages that must be used by the end of the month (knowing full well that most people won’t even bother using them). It’s the thought that counts.

What do you think?