Outage SMS Received

I live in the DFW area. I received an SMS from 89611 that says:

"We have detected an outage that affects your Internet, phone, TV guide & On Demand services. Expected restoral by 10-12-2015 05:30 PM. Reply YES to get updates."

I honestly assumed this was some kind of scam or phishing attempt until a few hours later I received a Verizon email stating more or less the same thing. I just wanted to bring it to Verizon's attention that I did not know that 89611 was a Verizon SMS short code (Googling turned up nothing).

Thanks.