Despite the fact that it had one of its best years in recent history, and has attracted millions of new customers, AT&T has yer again been rated, by far, as the worst mobile phone provider in the US by Consumer Reports.
The consumer advocacy group released its latest data on the mobile industry, ranking all of the major providers on the following categories:
– Voice service
– Texting service
– Data service
– Mobile customer support
– Online customer support
– E-mail customer support
– Knowledge of staff
– Ability to resolve issues
– Overall value
Each metric was given a score of 1 – 5, where 1 is “Worse” and 5 is “Better.” Of the nine categories, AT&T received a score of “1” in eight of them. Its best score was its rating on texting service, for which it scored a 2. No other carrier received a 1 on any of the categories at all.
But not everyone else did amazingly well. In fact, among Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, no one received a “5” score on any metric. The only one that did was US Cellular, which was ranked as the best provider. It, however, has limited coverage around the country.
The final ranking was as follows:
#1 – US Cellular
#2 – Verizon
#3 – Sprint
#4 – T-Mobile
#5 – AT&T
In response to the latest report, AT&T issued this statement:
“We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience. The fact is wireless customers have choices and a record number of them chose AT&T in the third quarter, significantly more than our competitors. Hard data from independent drive tests confirms AT&T has the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network with our nearest competitor 20 percent slower on average nationwide and our largest competitor 60 percent slower on average nationwide. And, our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent – the equivalent of just one call in a thousand – of the industry leader.”
