Verizon Wireless, Alltel tops in Consumer Reports survey

[ComicalMoodyDan]

Verizon Wireless, Alltel tops in Consumer Reports survey
By Kelly Hill
Story posted: December 3, 2007 - 6:13 pm EDT

In its annual rating of wireless service, Consumer Reports christened Verizon Wireless and Alltel Corp. its top picks—and largely panned service from Sprint Nextel Corp.

Based on nearly 48,000 responses from Consumer Reports’ online subscribers, the magazine ranked the five largest wireless carriers’ performance in 20 metropolitan areas around the country. Verizon Wireless received the highest ranking in 15 of the 20 and tied for the top spot with T-Mobile USA Inc. in the Minneapolis-St. Paul and Seattle markets.

Consumer Reports concluded that T-Mobile USA’s service was “on par with Verizon in most of the metro areas we surveyed” and often offered a less expensive service option. Meanwhile, Alltel came out on top in the three cities for which Consumer Reports had adequate survey data: Tampa, Fla.; Cleveland, Oh.; and Phoenix, Ariz.

Sprint Nextel suffers

Sprint Nextel Corp.’s CDMA service (iDEN customers were excluded due to operating on a different technology) ranked at the bottom of the service survey in every market except Minneapolis-St. Paul (where AT&T received the lowest ranking), leading Consumer Reports to conclude that the carrier was “consistently among the lowest-ranted for satisfaction, dropped calls and customer service.” The magazine concluded that Sprint Nextel was “worth considering only if you especially value special offerings such as its walkie-talkie ‘push-to-talk’ service.”

Sprint Nextel has already been struggling with its performance and has said it will pour more resources into improving customer service.

The survey was conducted in September of this year.

Phone rankings

Consumer Reports also rated 60 different feature phones and smartphones, with the top picks including:

--For Verizon Wireless customers, the Verizon G’zOne Type-S and LG Chocolate VX8550 were the highest-ranked feature phone picks.

--T-Mobile USA’s top-ranked models were the Motorola V195 and Nokia 6103.

--The Samsung Sync and Sony Ericsson W810i received the highest ratings for AT&T Mobility.

--Sprint Nextel’s LG Muziq LX570 and Sanyo Katana DLX received the highest rankings for that carrier.

Among smartphones, the Apple Inc. iPhone from AT&T Mobility and the Palm Treo 755P from Sprint Nextel topped Consumer Reports’ list.

Verizon Wireless, Alltel tops in Consumer Reports survey - RCR Wireless News

[bobolito]

Another useless survey by CR. My question is how is AT&T adding customers at about the same rate as Verizon if they are so terrible like CR says?

[cheddar]

Originally Posted by bobolito

Another useless survey by CR. My question is how is AT&T adding customers at about the same rate as Verizon if they are so terrible like CR says?

I don't know about you but I basically never call customer service. I think I've called once in the last five years.

[larry]

*yawn* These surveys never make much sense. The only reason T-Mobile does as well as they do is because their good customer service carries them up a notch or two. The main reason Sprint does bad in all categories is because of their customer service and overall negative fallout as a result of the merger. If Sprint had T-Mobile's customer service they would rank much higher in these surveys and would also do much better in the call quality dept as well.

[bobolito]

hehe....you have a point there, Larry. It seems that customer service alone is what determines the call quality and all other ratings in these surveys. But AT&T CS is not that bad. At least they were not the ones claiming that 0.02 cents was the same as 0.02 dollars.