Verizon resolves outage that affected SLO County customers over the past week

A Verizon wireless service outage that affected parts of San Luis Obispo County for several days was resolved Wednesday morning.

Cayucos resident and Verizon customer Gayle Force said she first noticed issues with her phone calls going through starting late last week.

"It sounded like it was sort of coming in and out and in and breaking up, (so) that there was no way to have a conversation," Force told The Tribune. "I would talk and people could hear me fine, but I couldn't hear the other person at all."

Force said her son, who lives in Los Osos and uses Spectrum's wireless service, also reported similar service disruptions over the past week.

She also said a neighbor on her street who works at Hearst Castle experienced the same issues, along with the castle's cell service. San Luis Obispo State Parks Coast District superintendent Dan Falat confirmed that calls to the castle have been "spotty" over the past week, with more dead spots than usual.

Force said above all, she was scared and frustrated when she couldn't get in contact with her parents, who live in Ventura County and have been affected by evacuations due to the Mountain Fire.

"Not being able to call over the weekend and reassure them, or any of that kind of stuff, was really hard on me because my family was not in immediate danger but they were affected by that fire," Force said.

After experiencing the issues for several days, Force attempted to contact Verizon both over the phone and at their physical store in San Luis Obispo. She said she spent around eight hours trying to get Verizon to respond to her service questions but got few answers.

In a statement shared with The Tribune, a Verizon spokesperson said the issue was resolved early Wednesday morning, but they were unable to specify how many customers were affected or the direct root of the issue.

"A third-party vendor's hardware issue was impacting service for some customers in the San Luis Obispo area," the statement from a Verizon spokesperson read. "This issue was resolved on our end as of 1:00 am PT this morning and Verizon customers should now be experiencing normal performance levels."