T-Mobile Only US Carrier Not On Worst Customer Service Survey?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/Advice/HowCompaniesWereRanked.aspx">http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/Advice/HowCompaniesWereRanked.aspx</a><br /><br />MSN Money and Zogby did a survey of companies with the worst customer service opinions by its customers. Sprint-Nextel was right there at the top. Verizon and AT&amp;T were also on the list, but in fairness, it could be their landline business - it doesn't say. T-Mobile isn't on the list anywhere though.<br /><br />How would you rank the customer service of your carrier? List the carrier in your reply to the thread. This will just give us an idea of how satisified Pocket PC Thoughts readers are with their carriers in general.

[amesskyway]

T-Mobile.
Their customer service has been superb. That's why I've been with them the last 3 1/2 years.

[Rod3]

AT&amp;T (formerly Cingular; my town still calls it Cingular)
The only carrier that I can pick up at home, and the local people are friendly and more than willing to help. So, I always deal locally. I know the rest of the world doesn't like AT&amp;T. It's great for me.

[TimothyP]

Verizon. I've been with them for about 5 years total (went to sprint for about a year :| ). I'm never on hold long. The service is great in my area and anywhere else i go. They never hesitate to send me a new phone when/if something goes wrong, free of charge and next day delivery. Also, i never see anything out of place on my bill. I doubt i will ever switch to another carrier (but they better hurry up and release the VX6800)

[bkerrins]

Fortunately, it's difficult for me to answer this. I've been with Cingular for about 7 years now. It used to be terrible, I had bad reception, lots of lost calls, problems with billing...that's all changed in the last year or two. I get good reception now, I don't lose calls, my bill has been correct for at least a year now. I haven't had a need for customer service...I'm getting great service, no need to call anyone.

[Underwater Mike]

Cingular/ATT still blows, IMO. Bad reception, bad service, bad experience. I'm gone as soon as my contract expires.

[Alsicole]

I'm with T-Mobile in the UK and their customer service has been excellent every time I've called. They made switching from my previous carrier simple and easy and have done a good job dealing with any questions I asked.

Over the years I've been with all the major UK carriers. So far T-Mobile have been the best.

[virain]

T-Mobile, hands down. Even if they slow to implement new technology, they were slow with EDGE, now with 3G, but they make it up with excellent customer service.

[ctmagnus]

Rogers. Excellent customer service. Service in general could be better, though. For example, I spent two non-consecutive days in Calgary recently. My data connection dropped to GPRS speeds a few times. There was one instance where I didn't have a signal, period. The best signal I've received has been Edge, on a device that's just waiting to pick up an HSDPA signal.

[bmurphy]

Telus has been excellent for me- my only beef with them is that I can't use the neat new devices coming out (HTC Advantage). I would really like to have that one! I've been with Telus for 14 years and the coverage has been total for me- since I've alway been out in the sticks - only visiting cities once in a while. :D

[martin_ayton]

T-Mobile (UK)

They have always been really helpful with me, with the following quibbles:

1) No on-line billing or 'My T-Mobile' account for business users
2) They have been promising a WM6 upgrade for my Vario2 'by this weekend' for 2 months now :roll:
3) They have only just allowed WiFi hotspot minutes to be added to my account

However, all of that is blown away by the fact that they are the only UK carrier with an all-you-can-eat data deal. Go, T-Mo!

[emuelle1]

I've been with Cingular and AT&amp;T for about seven years. I signed up with Cellular One back in 2000, just in time to be bought by Cingular. Cell One was pretty good and had courteous customer service. When Cingular took over, call quality took a nosedive, my wife and I kept having our calls dropped, and we couldn't get a signal most of the places we went to save our lives, and customer service was horrible IF you could even get through. Eventually customer service did improve to an adequate level. Not great, but decent. IN 2003, we left Cingular for AT&amp;T Wireless, only to be bought back by Cingular two months later. AT&amp;T Wireless had about the same call quality and signal level that Cingular did. In the two years we were on that contract, Cingular did improve their network, but relegated AT&amp;T Wireless customers to the old AT&amp;T network, In 2005, we switched back to Cingular and bought GSM phones. Our call quality and reception was good enough that we completely severed our land line through Verizon. Because I'm on a corporate discount through my employer, I get treated as a business customer so customer service isn't too bad. Oh, yeah, just a few months after switching to Cingular it got bought by "The New AT&amp;T".

Problems we have: for some reason, calls to my wife often don't come through. People leave her voice mail that can take an average of two days (and sometimes up to two weeks) to show up on her phone. For me things don't seem too bad but occasionally I'll be told that someone tried to call me. Every time I call to complain, they say they pushed out new firmware to her phone so it should be better. It never is. Even after she got a new phone, the problems persisted.

I call AT&amp;T "adequate". It's not great, it's not terrible. It gets the job done, but when my current contract comes up for renewal I just might give T-Mobile a chance.

[PdaAddict]

TMobile is the best. I can appreciate it even more now that I have switched to Sprint, whose customer service is so bad it was on CNN. Sprint is by far the worst of them all. It is so bad I had filed a compalint with BBB.

[mikestew]

People leave her voice mail that can take an average of two days (and sometimes up to two weeks) to show up on her phone. For me things don't seem too bad but occasionally I'll be told that someone tried to call me. Every time I call to complain, they say they pushed out new firmware to her phone so it should be better. It never is.

It's not the phone. I've seen it happen on other phones, including an 8125 and 8525, which they're not going to be pushing an update to. VMs showing up three days later; how lame can you possibly be to not even get VM right? There's a simple fix, though: YouMail.

Overall, though, can't complain about Cingular/AT&amp;T. Can't rave about them, either. Yes, they have 3G in the Seattle area, but I also pay $40/month for the privilege. Other than that, I never have to deal with them, so I guess that's good. :)

[Clinton Fitch]

I've been on T-Mo for about a year now and haven't had any issues with their support or their network for that matter (other than only being EDGE)

[ntractv]

I can say I have not had a problem with Verizon here in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area in regards to their Customer Service. The few time I have had to use customer service they have alway been always been helpful. On one occasiwon my Treo 700w just completely wonked out and they gave me a new one. When I bought a new Vista laptop and purchased the V640 Express Card (which, by the way, was not Vista compatible at the time) they instructed to me to exchange for the V740 without a hitch. Only complaint I have is the price for their service, but here in DC they are hands down the most reliable.

[signothefish]

I've been on Sprint now for a little over two months, and I had no idea customer service could be so horrible.

Between the billing problems, missing credits, wrong plans applied, inconsistent CS skills, language barriers, average 45-minute hold times, horrible line quality while on the phone with them, and even one time where I talked with them for almost an hour about something very simple that they failed to comprehend, they certainly live up to their reputation.

Sprint is the Wal-mart of phone companies.

[iPAUL]

Rogers has the best area coverage available in Canada, but their customer service is completely inept. It's definitely a win / lose situation.

[T-Will]

I've been with T-Mobile (U.S.) for the past 5 years, I've only had to call customer service maybe 5 times in all those years.

One time my voicemail button wasn't dialing the correct number forcing me to enter a password every time. They simply gave me the correct phone number to program in for voicemail and I was good to go.

Another time I think I lost service for a few hours, and I think it ended being a local equipment issue on their side.

Then when I bought my Dash, I called to add the data plan, but I was on a grandfathered plan that the system wouldn't allow a data plan to be added to. This was annoying because I had been paying $40/1000 mins, had been a loyal customer, would now be paying more for data, and they're going to punish me to downgrade to a $40/600 min plan just to add data :roll: (but that's another subject). For the most part, this was okay though since I never used over 600 minutes a month anyways.

Then recently, while going through the joys of the home-buying, I ended up racking up almost 1000 minutes the month my house closed (400 over my plan, EEK!!! 8O ). So I called customer service and told them I heard they had brought back the $40/1000 min plan. They switched me over to that plan on the spot and I also mentioned I thought I might have went a little over my minutes for this month. :oops: The customer service lady offered to back-date the plan change so I wouldn't have to pay for the extra 400 minutes. Phew!!! :)

So I'd say, except for the grandfathered plan issue, I'm very happy with their customer service and especially their plans and pricing.

[Brad Adrian]

How would you rank the customer service...
Sorry, the statistician in me won't let that go. It's "rate..." :)

[Ed Hansberry]

How would you rank the customer service...
Sorry, the statistician in me won't let that go. It's "rate..." :)
This is why Accountants get all the women and Statisticians stay at home on Friday night watching Star Trek reruns.

[djdj]

I've been with T-Mobile (formerly VoiceStream) for 11 years now and.... well... there is a reason I have been with them this long. I have only had one significant problem in all of that time, and they took care of it (somehow my data plan had been dropped from my account resulting in $300 of data charges, which they reversed). I really have no complaints; their coverage in my area is excellent, and their rates are unbeatable. A few times I have gone "shopping" for other cell phone plans and to get the same features I have now (4 phones, unlimited internet on three of them, unlimited text messages) it would cost me at least double on all of the other carriers. I think as long as they continue to treat me as well as they do I'm pretty sure I'll continue to stick with them too.

[ricksfiona]

I too was with Voicestream until they were bought by T-Mobile. Just about everyone I know uses Cingular/ATT. I've heard 50/50 positive/negative things about them. However, I've never heard anything negative about T-Mobile. Though, I live in the San Francisco area and my reception is spotty on occasion. It's usually by the coast or in the mountains, so maybe it's not a bad thing!

I had Verizon, Sprint and both stunk. The ATT/Cingular stories just scare me too much...

The only issue I have with T-Mobile is that they don't give me deals on phones.. I almost always have to pay a premium for the phone even though I've been a great customer over the years. Even with their slowness to upgrading technologies, I still stick with them.