Verizon Wireless Users Frustrated Over Billing System Outage

Verizon Wireless on Friday confirmed a widespread outage that's brought down parts of its billing system, preventing customers from being able to access their online accounts, pay bills or, in some cases, upgrade their phones.

"We are unfortunately experiencing issues with our billing system, affecting some customer accounts, mostly in Northeast, Midwestern and some Southern states," a Verizon spokesperson told CRN in an email. "We are working on a fix."

The spokesperson declined to comment on how many customers have been affected, saying in the email that Verizon has no "additional information to share" at this time.

[Related: German Government Ends Contract With Verizon Over U.S. Spying Concerns ]

Reports and tweets Friday suggested Verizon's data and voice services have not been affected by the outage, but the spokesperson again declined to comment further.

Verizon users flocked to Twitter Friday to vent their frustrations. Some complained of issues accessing their Verizon Wireless online accounts, paying their bills or upgrading and activating new phones for over two days:

. Hope they waive overage fees since unable to check usage and change plans. 36 plus hours and counting still no fix

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I'm just trying to pay my bill so I can stop getting passive aggressive emails

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One Verizon Wireless partner said the outage has not had any major impact on his business.

"The billing system going down would have nothing to do with us, because the way we are setting it up is that we do the billing on behalf of Verizon," said Marco Scibora, managing partner at Golden Gate Enterprises, a Minnesota-based Verizon Wireless partner. "I've heard about it, people have talked about it, but we have had a long, good relationship [with Verizon]."

Verizon's billing system outage is the second setback for the New York-based carrier giant this week. On Thursday, the German government said it's going to end its contract with Verizon in 2015 over concerns that Verizon's network could be used to facilitate NSA spying on German communications.

PUBLISHED JUNE 27, 2014