Consumer Reports Issues Cell Phone Provider Roundup--AT&T Comes In Last

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Hate your AT&T cell phone service? You’re not alone, according to a new report from Consumer Reports. In fact, according to that particular report, you’re really not alone. And this is distressing news for the crew out at AT&T like nobody’s business.

Several different facets of cell phone service were ranked across several different providers: U.S. Cellular, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T were all involved, and then ranked on a score of general satisfaction, coupled with a five-point scale in a variety of areas such as overall value, voice service, data plans, customer support services and staff knowledge. Based on the Consumer Reports chart, AT&T fared worst in ever category, only managing to tie for last place once, when asked about texting service it was ranked as bad as T-Mobile’s on the survey. AT&T also had the lowest overall score with a reader score of 60 on a 100 point scale.

AT&T, meanwhile, didn’t take this lying down and promptly issued a 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.”

When you balance this statement against the results of the survey (and there’s no word on what kind of range the survey had as to total number of respondents, though being a Consumer Reports survey definitely lends credence to its validity–even my folks trust the word of Consumer Reports) some serious discrepancies emerge, though it should be mentioned that geographic area has a lot to do with cell phone service, and thus, satisfaction.

So what’s the total picture? Right now, it’s one that’s not so good for AT&T.