AT&T Places Last in Consumer Reports Study

I have both AT&T and Verizon and at least in my area I find AT&T better in cell service and totally fine in customer service although I can't remember the last time I had to call them. I'm actually on the phone with Verizon pretty regularly ... And they're fine too ... I just don't like having to call period. The customer satisfaction numbers in this survey are disappointing (last in 19 cities? Really?) and I hope AT&T takes that feedback seriously.

Those churn figures are interesting ... And those are the types of figures I ar least consider when buying a car, that is, how often do current owners re-buy the same, newer model ... At least I think it's analogous.

Go Verizon, i guess. They must be doing something right.

I do actually prefer AT&T's website, though.

I had ATT for internet service, and if their cellphone support is anything like their internet tech support, I'll never get service from them. Verizon I only had to speak with once, and my experience with them was pleasant and resolved quickly. They even waived some fees they'd charged me.

Does anyone find it odd that there's an ATT ad on the page? It's right next to the comment box, watching my words crawl right across the page, right toward it...

I may give AT&T a hard time, but I don't know if I believe their customer service are less knowledgeable. A lot of verizon reps are completely clueless. Unless the AT&T reps are complete morons, they can't be worse than some of verizon's people. That being said, Verizon's reps will try their best to resolve your issues and transfer you if necessary if they have no idea what's going on.

Interesting that they left out Sprint in the story. Verizon took first, AT&T second and Sprint 3rd in the consumer report story but this article seems to omit that. Personally I've used Sprint for nearly a decade now and been fine with it. Does what I need, has service when and where I need it (I do fly a lot), no surprises in the bill and their phone support when needed sucks just like every one else.

They all suck in some form or another. My beef is with AT&T signal strength in my city. I can be driving by a tower in the downtown area and I don't have full bars. Text messages I send sometimes doesn't show up until 5-10 mins later. But I'm sure others have better experience with AT&T so in the end, it doesn't matter. When are we going to get away from minutes entirely?

I have Verizon for my landline. When my phone line went out, it took them 2 1/2 weeks to get it back up (there were no major storms in the US prior or during that time), and another week to get my DSL back up and running.

When traveling from Mass to my school in Vermont, I loose service with ATT frequently. I couldn't be happier with ATT though because it is the only service I can get full reception with when in the middle of nowhere in Vermont. I formerly had Verizon, and I would have to hang out my window at school to get one bar of reception, rain snow or shine. I also get ATT at work when I didn't get any reception from Verizon in the same location. Overall ATT is better for me, but I can definitely understand the gripes portrayed in this article. I have had a few experiences where I couldn't talk to my girlfriend for more than 10 minutes without the call dropping.

To be fair though, there is an ATT antenna at my school, as well as work, so that shouldn't be a good measurement of service at all...

Hey AT&T...can you hear Verizon now?!!!

That's OK, AT&T, you still have all those postcards ...

Wondering which cities rank AT&T last in service? There is a map for that.

AT&T, I think back when I had their service a few years ago, both for business and private phones, in Southern California, the Bay area, and the Pacific Northwest. I hated, literally hated it, but I had them for several years, 8 to be exact, and I thought that was just the way cellular service was. Poor connections, dropped calls, plain and simple lack of service in so many places, and forget about customer service. I would rate their customer service as the very worst I have ever encountered, anywhere! A friend of mine kept laughing at me....kept telling me I was an idiot and should switch to Verison. Finally switched after my last 3 hour (yes 3 hours most of it on hold) fiasco with customer service at AT&T.
I cannot believe I ever put up with AT&T as long as I did. Maybe they are better now than they were 2 or 3 years ago. I sure won't be giving them another try though anytime soon I can tell you that.

I have gone to AT&T before and the guy thats helping me is having a conversation on the blue tooth headset. But they are good at replacing their phones (because they get horrible service and break easily)

Well now. That churn figure is due to the fact that people want their iPhone and Apple Almighty to mother them and can't get it anywhere else except at AT&T. So I consider their "churn" figure to be very misleading.

While I still sometimes look at Consumer Reports, I no longer have any confidence in how they do their investigations. Anyone remember the Apple vs. PC article where they took Apple computers all above $1000 and rated them against $500-$700 PC's? Obviously the Apple's were shown on top (not by much though), but only by cherry picking data and not comparing the same thing across the board. That didn't stop the article headline from announcing that Apple is better than PC, a blatant misinterpretation of the data.

And I was just in Missouri visiting relatives last month, stopped by my brother's home. He had 10 months worth of AT&T bills for cell service, land line service, and high speed internet laid out on his dining room table. Asked him why, he responded "have you ever used AT&T? This is just nuts! I have been fighting with them for 3 months over unexplained charges on my bills going back to January of this year, and I am about at the end of my rope with them! I am so tired of spending hours on the phone trying to talk with someone I cannot understand at all, let alone any resolution or explanation of what I am being billed for, I am just going to pay them off, penalties and all, just to be rid of them so I can go with someone else, who do you use?"
Too funny, eh?

"Without question the surest indication of customer satisfaction is churn, or turnover. For the last quarter, our postpaid churn was just 1.17 percent."

That is only because of their ridiculously high termination fees that hold people for ranson and forces them to remain customers.

Just think "I-phone" AT&T is laughing at YOU all the way to the bank over that one.

I hate AT&T's website. Why can't anyone put a review up for the iPhone? Try calling AT&T about website issues and you'll find that AT&T doesn't even maintain their own website and they have little to no control as far as logging in and posting reviews. Unfortunately for me they are the only carrier I use, but I loathe them nonetheless.

From what I hear from my friends who have AT&T, they are great if you live in a big city, but suck if you live anywhere outside of one.

I grew up in rural SW Wisconsin and ATT doesn't even have a tower within 45 miles. Zero bars period. If you have Verizon you get cell service in probably 90% of the area, and 3G to boot. Thats why I'm with Verizon.

Screw rates, deals, iPhones, or whatever. If you don't have enough towers cause you only care about cities, then someone like me will never use you.

The Customer Service is horrible with AT&T they are all dumb! I have a BB Bold, I had it for 3 days, when I removed the headphone plug from the phone a large part of the phone came out with it. I called Customer Service, the lady on the phone told me I would have to call back on a land line so she could troubleshoot the phone. So I got on a land line. She then tells me to remove the battery and do a hard reset to see if it fixed it. Seriously?!? I told he the phone was physically broken, "well sir we don't cover that". I told her it was brand new. After yelling for nearly an hour I was sent to the Escalation Department. That is where you want to be. I got a new phone the next day in the mail a 1-month free bill.

But in 1 month I returned 4 LG Incites for defects until they let me get the BB Bold, I'm currently on my 4th Bold due to defects also.

I tried to put in a review of the Incite some of the problems. AT&T (or whoever does their site) wouldn't post comments that are negative to Customer Service, I attempted 4 times until they deleted my account.

Is anyone really suprised? AT&T has consistently ranked lower than Verizon. In most Consumer Reports it's typically Sprint and AT&T fighting each other for the bottom spot with Verizon, and sometimes T-Mobile fighting for the top.

I can see a whole new line of Verizon comercials comming out for that.

"Want to see how bad AT&T scored by Consumer Reports? There's an app for that"

I had bellsouth for years after ATT took over, I started getting charges for service I didn't have. We went back and forth for 3 months with contant promises that the charges would be removed, I finally removed att

Hey AT&T...can you hear Verizon now?!!!


No, they don't listen to anyone that's their biggest problem. All they care about is sucking your wallet dry and wait another 30 days so they can do it again.................

Simply quoting their churn rate as proof that customers must be happy is not a good idea. Yes the fact that customers aren't leaving in droves today is important, but if those customers are not happy they will not be promoting your business by word of mouth and they will be looking to your competitors for viable alternatives (how many stay because they don't know there are viable alternatives or because they are lucky enough to live close to a modern ATT tower?)

The other thing that gets me is quoting the number sounds so much like management by spreadsheet. Statistics can easily be twisted to say whatever you want. I have seen managers fool themselves into believing all is rosy because the stats in their spreadsheets told them so only a few days before the bottom fell out.

Any links to the Consumer Reports report?

Low Churn (hell, the only reason they're still in business) is due to one thing: the iPhone.

I may not care for the thing, but when a few million of your customers are there only for one phone, and they can't get that phone on any other carrier, they have to stay. I have a feeling AT&T will loose a few million customers the second the iPhone is available on other U.S. carriers. Hopefully AT&T plans ahead and staffs their call centers with extra operators to handle all those cancellation calls.