Slashdot Mirror
Consumer Reports: Cingular, Sprint Bad Performers
dcgirl20006 writes "It's that time again, Consumer Reports is out with the annual cell phone review. And Verizon has risen to the top. And, Cingular, with the most subscribers (post AT&T mega merger), claims it is the company with the "least dropped calls" but consumers say otherwise. What can be done? Provide risk-free 30 day trial period; realistic coverage maps, upfront price disclosure, and end early termination fees."
In spite of their mathematically challenged service reps, Verizon has always been a pretty good company for me. In Atlanta, the coverage is excellent and their prices and plans are fantastic.
I originally switched primarily because Verizon was one of a very, very few companies that refused to participate in and spoke out against the cell phone directory telemarketer's dream scheme a while back. It was pretty heavily covered by our consumer rights media guru here, Clark Howard (second entry). It also helps that most of my family is on Verizon and I can now call them for free.
And, for what it's worth, they did finally concede that $.002 is different from .002. :-)
Unless things change pretty dramatically, I'll probably stick with them for a long time to come.
I'm not sure about any reports that categorize what is basically a nation-wide business that really exists in terms of local regions, in this case, cell towers. I've used T-Mobile since Voicestream was the originator (actually, since day one of Voicestream) and I've been ecstatic about their coverage in the regions I travel in. For me, this is all that matters. I hear about horror stories with T-Mobile from others -- but their regions are different. For me to use a national consumer report for a company that exists for me mostly on a local level is really short-sighted.
I do like Consumer Reports and I think they do carry weight in their expertise in terms of national products on a national level -- cars, consumer equipment, home equipment, etc. I won't buy a car or a washer or a TV without at least reviewing what CR has to say. But if CR was to try to shoehorn local service into a nation-wide review, I don't think I would consider it trustworthy. For that, I'd contact people in the region and see what they use.
My father recently switched from T-Mobile to Cingular and he is actually happier -- better coverage in HIS region (objective), conversation quality seems better (subjective), and he hasn't had one dropped call versus T-Mobile dropping about 5% of the calls in HIS region. But in my area, Cingular is terrible.
Sure, the report (for subscribers) offers some city-wide ratings, but again it is too generic to really understand or use as a relevant way to pick a carrier. Also, it is important to realize that while "nationwide" can be broken down in multiple ways, it is still an overall general region. The Chicago area that I live in totals about 30 regions from urban to suburban to exurban to rural -- and all of them are rarely used by the same user. For a cell phone user, talking to me (in the burbs) means little if they live in farmland, so why would they care what the overall national service quality is when what matters most is what others in their region use and are happy with?
I am a fan of CR and other free market regulators (they offer opinions, you are free to choose based on that variety of opinion out there), but in this case I think they fall short of need. I do like them in terms of rating customer service, which is definitely NOT region-based or specific to one local market, but produces a reliable review of the company as a whole. I think that is where CR shines: in terms of letting us know about specific problems with their customer service center or with their contracts or with their pricing schemes. But in terms of overall reliability, I think this is more aggregation where aggregation is not appropriate or even considered valid.
I won't ever switch to Cingular myself because of two reasons:
1. I've had friends who have had terrible luck with their call center for help.
2. Bad contracts as compared to other cell phone manufacturers.
T-Mobile has the best customer retention department imaginable, and they seem to care because of the follow-up calls I've received. I also love their handset replacement plan as well as their optional insurance plan which I've used twice in 5 years. T-Mobile has made sure I am never without a working phone, and when I have had problems, they've worked to fix it. For me, that is still secondary to knowing what works in what markets/regions that I use, and CR just isn't appropriate for that purpose.
Sidenotes:
Early termination fees are VERY important when you're getting a $200-$300 handset "for free." Just returning the handset does not cover the commission paid to the dealer.
Upfront price disclosure is important, but it really should be up to the buyer-side of the transaction to understand what they're getting into. If you're not sure, ask a friend to help you.
Realstic coverage maps: What is realistic? I've never seen a coverage map that is consistently right -- things change, and conditions can be effected by new construction or even weather conditions. They can al
As much as I'd love to read the article, and as informative and helpful as I'm sure it is, I can't help but wonder if an article that requires that you pay for it (not even a free registration option) has any place on Slashdot.
(Cue "Slashdotters don't RTFA" jokes now)
A community-oriented lyrics site
What the best nation-wide wireless provider is. You might get different favorites, but most will say sprint sucks.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Provide risk-free 30 day trial period; realistic coverage maps, upfront price disclosure, and end early termination fees."
Yes, yes, yes, and maybe not.
Remember that the cost of the phone is included in a contract, and that's why you get the termination fee if you cancel early. Even if you explicitly banned early termination fees, they would introduce fees for paying off the phone if you cancel the contract early that would be eerily similar to the termination fee. I guess it would be more explicit to the user though. Worse could be they keep the contract fees the same, but you have to pay in addition for your phone.
The 30-day trial period should be enough to find out about service issues that you wouldn't know about until you had the contact otherwise.
Then again, I'm not in America, but a couple of the same issues occur in England.
As a somewhat happy Verizon user, I can't deny that their COVERAGE is simply fantastic.
That being said, I feel that their disabling of their phones is ridiculous. The Motorola E815 that I purchased has numerous features that have either been disabled or crippled. Sure I can hack it, but that's not the point. It's one of the few reasons I have considered switching to someone with a more open policy regarding usage. Also, I pay significantly more than my friends/family that use Cingular/Sprint.
I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather pay a one time 200$ fee for my cellphone, have it unlocked, and be able to take it with me to whichever carrier, than to have an early termination fee. Heck, I already do this anyways, WITH the early termination fee. The early termination fee is not to recoup costs on the phone, it's the wireless providers way of making you stick with them, and it's sad. Make me pay retail for the phone straight from the phone companies and provide me service as it should be. Can you imagine if we had to buy our televisions from Comcast and it only worked on their cable network!??? Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous the whole thing is?
Ask your local real estate agent. Someone commented asking a trucker for coverage, but usually highways are very well covered, even by the worst providers because it is easier to towers very near highways. Your local real estate agent will have traveled all over your area, and probably would even be able to tell you which service doesn't work in what particular neighborhood.
Will the War in Iraq get better or worse in 2007? Vote here
I agree with the chap who said they have the best customer retention dept... One year ago, I was going to leave (I had no contract) and they convinced me to stay by giving me 1500 day minutes, ul night/weekend, nationwide roaming, etc. for $49 a month -- no contract! I was going to switch to Cingular anyway a few months later, but ended up staying because 1) T-Mobile significantly improved coverage around Dallas-Fort Worth and 2) switching to Cingular, for a plan with similar minutes and text messages, would cost me at least $20 more each month AND that would be with a 2 year contract! I recently called T-Mobile about upgrading to a Blackberry... not only were they willing to give me a good deal on the phone (I told them I wanted no contract -- not having a contract gives you a HUGE bargaining chip), but they said I could keep my sweet minutes deal and get the unlimited data plan for only $15 more a month -- again, way better than Cingular. If I wanted to be an ass, I imagine I could call T-Mobile every few months and threaten to cancel and they'd probably comp my account $50 each time for staying. They're really working hard to keep their subscribers happy. I have no plans to switch to anyone else now.
A lot of times I see people bemoan one cell phone company or another for coverage when the issue at least partially lies with the phone. It's a two-dimensional equation and far too often it's not being treated that way. I know my Cingular coverage used to stink until I switched phones and then all of a sudden the dropped calls and poor coverage I got magically went away. I'm now pretty happy with Cingular after I got rid of my old phone. I do realize that there are plenty of examples where the fault lies squarely on the provider's shoulders but it's important to at least keep in mind that the fault could lie in the phone. I don't know if this partiular study takes that into account (I won't pay for the article) but I've never seen one that does take that into consideration.
Frankly, Consumer Reports really doesn't know what they're talking about here. Since all national carriers require contracts, they have an aproximately equal lock-in on their subscribers. So, subscribers have an equal chance to leave any of the carriers. Who are they leaving? Well, they're leaving Cingular at 1.5% (post-pay) per month. They're leaving Sprint at 2.4% (post-pay) per month. They're leaving T-Mobile at 2.3% (post-pay) per month. And they're leaving Verizon at 0.95% (direct retail post-pay) per month. Verizon's numbers are better because they're not including indirect customers who tend to churn at a higher rate - but they're still somewhere between 1% and 1.24% (their total churn). Suffice it to say, it's easy to see who customers stay with. Is Consumer Reports talking out of their butt? Absolutely Yes! If you get results that are inconsistant with churn numbers, you either have to come up with an argument why churn isn't a good indicator of customer satisfaction or there's something wrong with your methodology. Frankly, the percentage of customers that leave each month is a really great way to see how many are dissatisfied.
Essentially, Consumer Reports methodology is inaccurate - almost to the point that random chance would have provided as good a result. For example, if I claim Cingular and Sprint are good and Verizon and T-Mobile are bad, I'm pretty much as accurate as their report saying that customers like Verizon and T-Mobile. Customers like Verizon, followed by Cingular, followed by T-Mobile, followed by Sprint. That's accurate and I have REAL data over a sample of MILLIONS to back that up.
Consumer Report's review (yes, I have a web subscription and read the entire thing) only covers the major contract-based cell phone providers. They don't discuss pre-pay or by-the-minute services of those providers, or discuss the pre-pay only providers at all.
I'm sure there are others here that prefer to remain disconnected from the world when not at my work desk, and only carry a cell phone for wife/family/emergency use. I just changed providers this week and have my own (very brief) review of the pre-pay providers.
I had been using Cingular's Pay-As-You-Go service, with by-the-minute pay rather than the monthly charge. (Actually, I had been using AT&T's pre-paid service until the merger.) I was on Cingular's CDMA network, which they are shutting down April 1. Cingular offered a choice of two new GSM phones for free for me to use to remain with them, but both phones were featureless and looked similar to the now-clunky Nokia phones of the early part of the decade. (That probably speaks more to Nokia's stagnant development, but Cingular still chose to buy and offer that product.)
I chose not to stay with Cingular in part because I was offended at the offer they made me, and in part because of my past service.
- While I have few to no problems with dropped calls, my wife says that she often has to dial 2-3 times before the call will go through. (The other times, it goes straight to voice mail without ringing.) This likely has to do in part with my phone (one of those ugly Nokia models) and part to do with the network (Cingular hasn't invested in their CDMA network in years, instead investing in GSM).
- I was more concerned with the expiration dates for their pre-paid minutes. AT&T offered 635 minutes with a year of expiration for $100, which is about 15 cents a minute. Cingular's $100 offer was 400 minutes, with only 180 day expiration. Given that I talk about 30 minutes a month, the loss of minutes was not so bad, but the expiration made the product useless. Instead I bought $25 for 100 minutes @ 90 day expiration, and had to buy another one each quarter. (They also shorted me a day every time I refreshed.) I think Cingular just changed the $100 card back to a year expiration, but it was too little too late.
Looking at other providers, I considered both major carriers that offer pre-paid plans, and the pre-paid only providers.
- Verizon's pre-paid plans cost, at minimum, $1 a day for service. The Verizon salesman at a Dallas Circuit City, to his credit, recommended that I not go with them as it would be too expensive for my needs.
- The Verizon rep instead pointed me to Amp'D mobile, which he said used the Verizon network. This would have allowed me to get a major-model phone (like a Motorola Razor). I didn't chose Amp'D because I don't want a phone with a camera (I attend 2-3 movie festivals each year, including one this past weekend, and I would have to surrender my phone if it had a camera), and I didn't really need a phone that still costs $200 or more for my pre-paid service. They also charge $0.25 cents a minute, and (from their brochures) would require quarterly fill-ups to avoid expiration.
- Cricket wireless has been advertising their pre-paid service in my area. They offer service here in Austin, but don't serve Dallas/Fort Worth where my family lives and my wife and I travel each holiday.
I chose Virgin Mobile, as they seemed like the best service for me:
- They offered nice-looking phones at reasonable prices. I got a Vox 8610, a nice flip phone without a camera, for about $25 from their website. The reviews I read about this phone before I ordered it were generally positive.
- They use Sprint's network. Despite the Consumer Reports publication, in 3-4 days of use I have yet to miss or drop a call. I am even able to receive calls and text messages while the phone's antenna is down, the phone is in my pocket, and I'm sitting down, which is an improvement. (Yes, the p
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
As a former wireless sales representative, I can pretty much tell you this:
None of you really care all that much about the service. It's the phone you are interested in.
First of all, according to market research, nearly all of you are in complete and total denial. The internal company documents that I saw pointed to "Handset Dissatisfaction" as the number one reason for churn (the % of subscirbers lost in a given quarter). People care about the phone they get. They care about it as a fashion accessory and as a social interaction machine.
Here's my favorite part: no one ever admits it.
In fact, if this get enough mod points for people to read it, I can almost guarantee that there's going to be a slew of "Well, that's not why I bought the phone..." posts behind it. No one was honest about it. Being a fan of psychology, I'd often see how much I could make the customers squirm with this issue. I'd show them the phones, we had a bricky Nokia and a black Motorola clamshell (it's a clamshell phone, not a flip; it doesn't flip. it doesn't even half-flip, it opens... like a clam). I would tell the customer that the Nokia had better reception (it does, proven by internal company memos I saw), was more durable (it was, we rarely had any in the return bins, and I had a whole folders' worth of anecdotes about Nokias surviving), and was the phone I recommended to anyone who cared about features and substance over style (it was and still is).
Needless to say, everyone bought the Moto. It was notorious for breaking, had awful signal (a good 2-3 bars worse than the Nokia), a screen that cracked under the slightest pressure (it got SO bad and SO prevalent that the company actually had to begin covering cracked LCDs UNDER WARRANTY for this particular model, if that tells you anything). I couldn't give the Nokia away, and believe me, I WAS. Both phones were allowed to be sold for free (if it was required to close the deal, and it usually was), but I could poise the Nokia as a free phone, and the Moto as costing $50, because of the flip, and people would still pay for it. Even after I told them that I recommend the Nokia for reception and durability.
People gots ta have that flip shorty!
So my point is, while you try and tell us that what you want from your cellular service provider is good coverage, you don't. Not really. Bad wireless coverage is something we've all come to expect, we hardly even notice it anymore, or get bothered because it happens. What really drives customers into the store ISN'T the company, it ISN'T the service, and it damn sure isn't the cost. No, you, the customer, came to see me because I held the key to what you really wanted: a mobile phone that, like your Lexus, told everyone how big your penis really is.
You'll apologize for my overly cynical attitude, but quite frankly if you're a wireless customer that has gone into a retail store, I'm certain you're one of the people I learned to despise so easily while working there. Oh yeah, one more thing while I'm here, hey NUMBNUTS, the phone's not REALLY free! We subsidize the cost. We don't walk out back and pick one off the tree. They cost money. So when you destroy yours within 2 weeks of purchase, maybe the question you ought to ask isn't "Why did I get this for free two weeks ago and have to pay a hundred bucks now?" but rather "Why do I persist in owning things when it's clear that I'm not going to exercise any responsiblity during the course of my ownership?"
God I hate the wireless industry. Go ahead, feed the greed. Go get your RAZR or Chocolate or whatever schlock marketing scheme that you're busy NOT falling for. Trust me, the wireless companies have your number, and they are routinely screwing you in the ass and laughing about it, because you know what? You can't hear them. You're too busy talking on your Treo/RAZR/Chocolate/Blackberry/Sidekick/SLVR.
Whatever. There's not point to this post. There's no way to fix the system, and there's no way to get people to
Been with Verizon for over four years, and they have never, not once, resolved a problem without me having to complain to my state's Attorney General's Dept. of Consumer Affairs. The AG writes, and then, magically, somebody actually deals with the problem. The quickest I got anything resolved with them was six months, and multiple phone calls, letters, and harangues. The slowest was a year, with even more multiple calls, letters, yada, yada, yada. I've had three billing problems in four years, and the last time, when it took a year, they owed me $300. To say these bastards suck is being too kind. Obviously, once my indentured phonitude is up, that's the last they'll see of me. After that, it's voip all the way.
- As a downside, the phone has a Virgin Mobile logo on the front. :( I don't think 30s engineer is their target demographic, so their company image doesn't exactly match what I'm trying to express all the time.
:-) I'm not an engineer, but I am technically-minded and in my 30s. Virgin Mobile has continued to be an easy choice for me for a few reasons, including...
... that with my particular phone's ability to assign specific ringtones to specific incoming phone numbers (provided there is callerID information), I could store the phone numbers of the fax machines that were calling me under a special group, say, "SILENCED MORONS", and then assign the silent ringtone to each one of them. At that point, if they ever call me again, sure the phone will light up and display the incoming call and phone number, but the phone will play the special ringtone -- COMPLETE SILENCE! That's about as good a blacklist as anyone could ask for.
:-)
I had to post a reply after reading that.
1. Near-perfect anonymity. You don't even have to give Virgin Mobile a name when you activate your phone. Buy the phone with cash at a physical store, complete the activation of the new cell phone using another phone and their automated system (use a payphone and dial Virgin Mobile's 800 number to do that for a paranoia level of anonymity), and you're as close to being a completely anonymous cellphone owner as is possible today. Continue buying "top-up" cards with cash at physical stores, and you'll maintain that anonymity.
2. Awesome service reps. Let's face it, few places are perfect, but I've had the best luck with VM's call centers amongst those I call with any regularity. The staff are typically a younger bunch, but they're the bright kind of younger, you know?
3. They actually understand local number portability, and how to make it happen for their customers. I transferred my land line number (so long, Verizon bastards!) to a second VM cell phone. The transfer was completed in less than a week, and it worked flawlessly. The service rep (see above) I spoke with when arranging the transfer was absolutely on the ball.
4. Some of their phones have an easy hack for blacklisting incoming callers. Here's the cool part: if your VM phone can download ringtones, you may be able to set up a blacklist...
After I started receiving faxes from a pool of about 20 different phone numbers at all hours of the night, I phoned VM's customer service and asked if either the VM service itself or my phone supported blacklisting (i.e. block the fax machines that were calling me). The rep was apologetic and told me that no, unfortunately, neither the phone nor the service had that capability. So I asked him if my particular phone supported downloadable ringtones. A bit confused by the sudden change in topic, the rep said that yes, it indeed supported that. And so I asked if by any chance -- amongst the collection of thousands of ringtones VM outlines on their website -- if they happened to have one that played complete silence. The rep immediately got where I was going (see my comments above about bright service reps)
Anyway, the representative immediately got what I was trying to do, thought it was a pretty damn cool approach, and then proceeded to take about 15 minutes hunting through VM's massive database of ringtones. And guess what? He found one -- a ringtone consisting of pure silence. The rep pointed out that the only downside was that, like all their basic ringtones, it would cost $2.00 to download. I told the guy that was the best deal for some silence I'd ever been offered! Now I have my blacklist.
Seriously. Virgin Mobile is awesome. I don't normally go out of my way to offer much praise for any corporation, but I've been so impressed by what I get for the money I spend with them, that even the occasional glitch I experience (rare) just
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.