Consumer Reports: AT&T Ranks Last in Customer Satisfaction, Verizon Takes First Place

[Irish Rose ACE - Master]

A report published by Consumer Reports said AT&T ranks last among major U.S. wireless service providers, with 19 of 26 surveys indicating AT&T had the worst performance.

Subscribers in large markets such as San Francisco and New York City have long complained of lackluster 3G service -- though analysts were somewhat surprised to see AT&T ranked last in 17 other cities.  In San Francisco, Verizon had a 74 overall score, with AT&T receiving a disappointing score of 39.

Prior to this report, many tech enthusiasts believed AT&T struggled in markets where consumers demand the most of their providers, but that turned out to be incorrect.

"We believe it has been an elitist investor view that only a few high profile AT&T markets are having problems on the theory that only 'tech savvy' residents of coastal cities would find enough use in the (Apple) iPhone to impact the quality of AT&T's network," said Walter Pieck, a Pali analyst, in an investor note.

There has been an increased amount of chatter regarding the iPhone switching to Verizon Wireless (after a network switch from CDMA to LTE), which leads the way among subscribers, after the AT&T/iPhone exclusivity contract ends.

AT&T must now attempt to fix its customer relations issues -- especially if it wants to keep the iPhone -- as a combination of dropped calls, poor 3G coverage, and similar issues. If Verizon doesn't get the iPhone, it's possible T-Mobile, which ranked No. 2 behind Verizon, may be the next company to offer the iPhone.

AT&T responded with the following statement to Consumer Reports:  “We appreciate and value all customer feedback. We learn from it and it helps us serve our customers better. Without question the surest indication of customer satisfaction is churn, or turnover. For the last quarter, our postpaid churn was just 1.17 percent.”

Full article can be found   here.

[Irish Rose ACE - Master]

Verizon shouldn't be too proud of only receiving a medium score of 74%, however, I do think these results should be taken very seriously by AT&T higher ups, and more effort placed into improving their 3G coverage in ALL areas, and  not just a select few. If this occurs in the future, results like these ones will be much higher for AT&T...... While I DO have great 3G coverage in my area with AT&T, I think these results do a good job of showing that much improvement is needed if AT&T has any hopes of regaining their reputation that has been dragged through the mud by Verizon.

(Just my 2 cents)

[sitnsidewayz]

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Irish Rose wrote:

Verizon shouldn't be too proud of only receiving a medium score of 74%, however, I do think these results should be taken very seriously by AT&T higher ups, and more effort placed into improving their 3G coverage in ALL areas, and  not just a select few. If this occurs in the future, results like these ones will be much higher for AT&T...... While I DO have great 3G coverage in my area with AT&T, I think these results do a good job of showing that much improvement is needed if AT&T has any hopes of regaining their reputation that has been dragged through the mud by Verizon.

(Just my 2 cents)

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Hah Hah! I always like the funny comments after those articles. True story here. I walk up on my wife and her sister on Thanksgiving day. They are talking about their cell phones and service and my wife is telling her what crummy service we now have at home. She then proceeds to tell her that we need to switch to Verizon because Verizon has cell towers all over the place and AT&T has very few. At that moment I realized she was referring to the maps commercials. I proceeded to explain to them that the maps in the commercials were only in reference to 3G. All this got me was bewildered looks from them. I then proceeded to explain to them what 3G is and it being the reason we have that crummy service at home, but they wasn't having any of it. All they cared about was, Verizon had a better looking map. Now that is some dragging in the mud. Too bad AT&T couldn't convince a judge of that, but the maps don't lie.  

[mikewho]

att's rep is def low right now.

im pretty happy with them though so i dont plan on going anywhere. Hopefully they will make the necessary upgrades.

Message Edited by mikewho on 12-01-2009 09:06:17 PM

[Irish Rose ACE - Master]

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mikewho wrote:

att's rep is def low right now.

im pretty happy with them though so i dont plan on going anywhere. Hopefully they will make the necessary upgrades.

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I am very happy with the service that I receive as well. AT&T is the best carrier where I live, besides AT&T, which is why I try to take other peoples comments with a grain of salt. 

[Irish Rose ACE - Master]

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sitnsidewayz wrote:

Hah Hah! I always like the funny comments after those articles.

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I love the comments after the articles as well, sometimes they are more interesting than what is in the articles. 

[Doppler808]

find what works for you. phones should also be second. What good is the phone IF you don't have adequate coverage?

[IPhoneGoHome]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=6337&tag=trunk;content

Can't argue with numbers.

[juicy907couture]

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IPhoneGoHome wrote:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=6337&tag=trunk;content

Can't argue with numbers.

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I find it funny that iPhoneGoHome created an account just to post that.

In Alaska (where I live) we have VERY few choices for cell phone carriers. AT&T is the only nation-wide carrier, the rest are small, local companies. We don't have Verizon... we don't have T-mobile... we have AT&T. AT&T has very good coverage here in the biggest (in AK) city I live in. I would rather have poor customer service and actually be able to use the phone, than to have decent service (no one company have 100% great customer service) but not be able to use my phone and always be in dead zones.

[sitnsidewayz]

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mikewho wrote:

att's rep is def low right now.

im pretty happy with them though so i dont plan on going anywhere. Hopefully they will make the necessary upgrades.

Message Edited by mikewho on 12-01-2009 09:06:17 PM

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The point of my story was to show that AT&T made a valid arguement. A whole bunch of people are misinterpreting what the maps represent. However, the bottom line is that the maps are acurate for what they actually do represent. Verizon certainly struck at the right time, but it looks like AT&T took a low blow. Someone at Verizon is surely going to get a big fat bonus.

[hme83 ACE - Master]

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sitnsidewayz wrote:

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mikewho wrote:

att's rep is def low right now.

im pretty happy with them though so i dont plan on going anywhere. Hopefully they will make the necessary upgrades.

Message Edited by mikewho on 12-01-2009 09:06:17 PM

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The point of my story was to show that AT&T made a valid arguement. A whole bunch of people are misinterpreting what the maps represent. However, the bottom line is that the maps are acurate for what they actually do represent. Verizon certainly struck at the right time, but it looks like AT&T took a low blow. Someone at Verizon is surely going to get a big fat bonus.

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LOL.  It was like "The Perfect Storm" timing for Verizon's ad campaign - widespread at&t network capacity issues, very small 3G footprint, and the implementation of a mandatory $30/month data plan for their data intensive devices.

Hopefully it will truly open at&t's eyes to the fact that they've got existing issues to address well beyond the tech-oriented markets where they'd been focusing their 3G coverage expansion efforts, presumably in an attempt to improve the rhetoric of the tech bloggers.  

Message Edited by hme83 on 12-02-2009 12:25:00 PM

[mikewho]

ill gladly take less 3g now since my phone bill is alot more reasonable now. the few people that i know who have actually stayed with vz are paying through the nose for it.

a friend who was a strong vz advocate the other day said vz was getting out of hand with their policies and practices. he made the jump to att and is happy. he ended up getting a plain old propel for voice and texting.

att isnt perfect but i can call them up and say im low on minutes and they generally offer some rollover minutes as long as i dont do it too often. With V they always offered to up the plan.

[Smurfette27]

I enjoy att's coverage and phone selection.the corporate stores are well lit and friendly. Well, the mentor ohio one is. The Mayfield location is quite the opposite.  Customer care is typically poor for me. I have lengthy horror stories. Too much time on the phone to correct the errors they made after I initially call in..  Do I plan to switch? Nah.. I just try not to call customer care without a few hours to spare.

[MISDirector]

Funny thing here is that there are people that dont care about the maps that have actual experience with both carriers and believe that Verizon is a better system. Honestly Sprints 3G system is better than Verizons but it does not have the same coverage so Verizon wins that fight.

As for the maps, if the truth is that Verizon has more 3G coverage than ATT does not have an arguement, and it is makes them mad dont sue, FIX IT!!

I have been an ATT customer for 7 years and have called about drop spots in the areas I frequent and I have yet to have any of them get fixed.

Hows that for coverage.

[LANCE96816]

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/60353

[Irish Rose ACE - Master]

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Doppler808 wrote:
find what works for you. phones should also be second. What good is the phone IF you don't have adequate coverage?

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I agree with you, and this was my main reason for switching from Verizon, to AT&T. While I liked the phone that I had with Verizon, I wasn't able to use it in my house, so I asked myself what the point in staying was, and left.

[mikewho]

yeah my signal at home is pretty good. after they did some upgrades a while back the signal at home has been great with no issues. With that along with a list i use it as my main phone at home.

[sitnsidewayz]

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mikewho wrote:
yeah my signal at home is pretty good. after they did some upgrades a while back the signal at home has been great with no issues. With that along with a list i use it as my main phone at home.

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That's what I would like to do. Guess I will have to wait till they release the Microcell in my area to see how well it works.

[Andy in NY]

im sorry but the maps have nothing to do with peoples customer satisfaction. i was an att customer who jumped ship because att reps constantly lied to me. i know others that it has happened to. there are also people who are happy.

but the point of the survey was that there are more people that are unhappy with att than there are people that are unhappy with verizon. 

[dyanez]

Personal observation: after 9/11/01 I left AT&T for Tmobile because of over subcribed services in downtown Wash DC. My wife got Verizon because it offered phone service in the DC Metro. - Well sort of! - However when I used her Verizon phone later after going to a single family plan my reception in our 15 story hirise condo was poor and there were far more dead spots in my usual traffic pattern of travel the Tmo & ATT combined. We went back to ATT in richmond because of a similar problem in our present apartment - very, very spot coverage from room to room and even within the same room with VZ. AT&T however has been solid for the past year in our travels so why switch? Consistency where you use your phone regularly is more important than style of "glitz" in my book.

[sitnsidewayz]

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Andy in NY wrote:

im sorry but the maps have nothing to do with peoples customer satisfaction. i was an att customer who jumped ship because att reps constantly lied to me. i know others that it has happened to. there are also people who are happy.

but the point of the survey was that there are more people that are unhappy with att than there are people that are unhappy with verizon. 

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Sorry, I may have gone off track. I wasn't referring to the Consumer Reports article. I was referring to Irish Rose's comment about AT&T's reputation being dragged through the mud.

[mikewho]

Att does need to step up to the plate and get upgrades out there that are Noticed by consumers. I think that will help make the difference., A company can tell me they have made billions in upgrades but if i still have a bad signal at home work etc then the billions mean nothing to me.

Att treats me well so i stand by them 100% but i do think they need to step it up a little harder to get out of the mud.

[turbo46032]

Satisfaction with device AND service are both important; what good does it do to me to have CDMA service if the only country other than US that I can use it on is Armenia? (if you're lucky you may be a neighbor to an Armenian bakery, these dudes know their pastry and bread stuff)....Also, Verizon offers very little from my favorite companies (Sony Ericsson, Nokia... This kills off any smartphone not based on the Blueberry or MS Windows CE...

If AT&T could build a time machine to take us back to 2007 and 2G I'd be as happy as a clam. In a few years some MBA type will write a book about 3G...  But then, in 10 yeas we'll be in this here forum arguing about the iThink (no touchscreen, you think and it does whatever) and about the good old days of 5G...

[asc1998]

I can agree with this. AT&T does need to step up to the plate and start upgrading their network. My 3G service is spotty. 

I have been thinking about switch to another carrier where I can basically get my same voice/data plan for about $20 - $30 less. 

[mikewho]

over the last few days it does seem that att has stepped it up so we will have to see how it all pans out.