Customer service can be one pain in the neck to deal with and with the large mobile carriers in the United States it becomes a premium. Customers need to have very good customer service to answer questions on the spot and to get mobile phones fixed or figured out. When a company has poor customer service it shows right away and Consumer Reports is another place that it shows when they publish their ratings of domestic cell phone networks. The ratings let consumers know which company is the least liked by the subscribers they currently have.
The survey by Consumer Reports is based on a large pool of 66,000 Consumer Reports subscribers, which covers 22 metro markets in the United States and asked them about their experiences with mobile carriers. With the four major carriers, Verizon was at the top of the list with the best satisfaction ratings for texting, data service and customer service staff knowledge. Sprint and T-Mobile followed right behind Verizon Wireless and that put AT&T, right at the bottom of the list, again. AT&T came in last with overall ratings and the company was also in last place in every single city that was surveyed.
In statement to MacWorld, a AT&T spokesperson commented by saying, “While we’ll of course evaluate and learn from the Consumer Reports survey, we made significant progress in our network in 2011 including a 25 percent improvement in 3G dropped call performance, 48,000 network improvements (more capacity, new cell sites, faster data speeds, and better connections), and many billions of dollars in capital investment to continue to improve our network. Only AT&T’s network lets the iPhone 4S download three times faster and enables simultaneous talk and surf for all smartphones. And, as customer demand continues to skyrocket, our proposed T-Mobile merger will enable AT&T to improve our customers’ experience even more.”
All four of the nation’s largest carriers were actually outranked in all categories on the survey by Consumer Cellular, Credo and US Cellular. US Cellular actually score the highest marks on the survey when it came to how the company handled voice, texting, data, customer knowledge and phone support. AT&T has found itself on the bottom before and the last time the survey was taken AT&T was the only place you could get the iPhone. Now that more carriers have the iPhone available, consumers can switch to a carrier with better customer support.
December 12, 2011 at 3:50 am
When AT&T canceled my unlimited data plan to 5gigabite plan they said I could cancel with no penalty but when I suggested I would cancel my 5 iphones with no penalty they said I was under contract.
December 17, 2011 at 7:19 am
It should be noted that even though AT&T scored really badly with their direct subscribers, their wholesale customers Tracfone wireless, did exceptionally well. This must go a little way to prove that the biggest gripe was not in fact signal, or coverage related, but instead related to poor customer service. If tracfone can make their senior value cellphone (SVC) customers happy, then a lot can be thought of the way that some of the smaller providers, don’t walk past the low-end consumers, and therefore score better than the big post paying providers.