I sent a reply to a friends message early this morning and it went through instantly and has 'delivered' status. Over the course of this afternoon Viber encountered problems and went down in many countries and many people were offline and unable to connect - eventually it was restored. My friend has been back online for many hours yet the message status is still as 'delivered' and not 'read' yet. Is it possible due to Viber being down later that day they never actually got it? Or just simply they haven't read it?
Yes, it's possible. If the message was sent during the error, the company probably rolled back. This means that all messages from that time frame, although they've been sent, are actually lost. Try to send the message again.