“The iPhone is great,” I often joke, “right up until you have to make a phone call.” Frustrations with dropped calls, missing text messages and overall shoddy AT&T service are legion.
Those frustrations are reflected in a new satisfaction survey of 58,000 Consumer Reports readers that ranks AT&T the lowest-scoring cellphone carrier in the U.S. Not only did AT&T score the lowest, it was the only one of the carriers rated that had a significant drop in overall customer satisfaction.
AT&T scored 60 points, well behind Verizon Wireless with a score of 75. In fact, AT&T got the dreaded “black dot” in nearly every category – value, voice, data, phone, website, email, staff knowledge and issue resolved.
Over half of those respondents who used AT&T owned an iPhone, and these iPhone owners were much less satisfied with their carrier than smart-phone users on other carriers.
AT&T issued a statement in response to the survey results, saying “We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience.” AT&T argues that it has the fastest mobile broadband network and that its dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent of the industry leader – “the equivalent of just one call in a thousand.” AT&T’s customers seem to believe otherwise.
The survey will be part of a Consumer Reports issue devoted to cellphones, hitting newsstands tomorrow.
