AT&T is the worst carrier in America. Again.

For the second year running, AT&T has taken top honors in the list of America's worst phone companies -- a hotly contested spot!

While AT&T's satisfaction score in 2011 wasn't as bad as its score from 2010, the Dallas-based cell phone provider, which recently discontinued its bid to acquire its better rival T-Mobile, still ranked at the bottom of the pack. Last year, AT&T was the only carrier for the Apple iPhone, but still managed to receive the lowest scores. The company issued a statement in response.
"We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience," it said. "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."

Verizon Wireless Trumps AT&T Again in Consumer Reports Survey (via /.)

(Image: $ at&t, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from zombieite's photostream)

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MORE: at&t • Business • christ what an asshole • telcoms

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technogeekagain

Many of us were cheering when the attempted AT&T purchase of T-Mobile was shot down. T-Mobile’s been pretty reasonable, in my experience — though I admit I’m a basic prepaid voice-service-only-and-a-few-texts-a-year customer.
- Draxlith
  
  Careful not to rejoice too soon, it was just a strategic withdrawal in hopes to keep the negative FCC report from coming out (which luckily came out anyway).
  
  We aren’t out of the woods yet, but there is hope that it will not come to pass.
  
  Sources/Good Reading on the matter:
  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/a-doomed-deal-att-withdraws-t-mobile-bid-at-the-fcc.ars
  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/a-disruptive-force-why-uncle-sam-wants-to-save-t-mobile-from-att.ars
Mark_Frauenfelder

AT&T is threatening to throttle my bandwidth because my wife, daughter, and I have used a total of 2GB of wireless data in the last 17 days: http://d.pr/ety0
- http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman
  
  That sucks. T-Mobile in Poland gives me 5GB/mo (technically it is unlimited but after 5GB the xfer speeds drop to about 1-2KB/sec until the monthly cycle is restarted) for about $20. I specifically made sure when signing up that there would be no tomfoolery with regards to tethering, streaming video, etc.
http://twitter.com/markhiggins76 Mark Higgins

At&t drops more calls nationwide than all other cell phone companies. A string and a tin can would drop less calls.
jlargentaye

I wonder how much of it is opinion inertia. I mean, other people hate AT&T, so it’s OK for me to say AT&T sucks. Same as Microsoft, opposite of Apple. Beware the mob effect.

Granted, AT&T deserved its reputation and I explicitly avoided being their client for that reason, but I remain curious about objective measures rather than consumer horror stories.
SamSam

I don’t use AT&T, so I may be somewhat less biased. If they say that their numbers tell them that they have the fastest network and almost the fewest dropped calls of any other network, it seems that there are three possibilities: their numbers don’t tell them all the information; they are lying; or AT&T customers are over-reporting compared with other customers because they are already biased to believe that AT&T is the worst.

Either that or “within 1/10 of a percent of the industry leader” is actually much worse than it sounds. If everyone else is clustered around 0.000001% dropped calls, 0.0000035% dropped calls, etc, then AT&T’s rate of 0.1% dropped calls is actually a huge figure.
Paul Renault

Wouldn’t be more helpful to praise those who are doing it right?

I’m assuming that there’s at least ONE telecom/ISP company that’s providing decent service, stands by its word, doesn’t use subterfuge to sell cell phone service, and doesn’t shaft the customer.

There’s got to be one. (Actually, I’m very happy with my provider. But I don’t have a personal cell phone; this might change my opinion.)
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  The customer satisfaction index rates companies within an industry. For there to be a loser there also has to be a winner.
  
  Or are you complaining about the angle BoingBoing has reported?
  - Paul Renault
    
    I’m not complaining about the angle. I’m asking.
    
    They’ve been at this nadir for years, apparently. Complaining about AT&T clearly doesn’t work.
    
    So I’m asking whether, as with raising children, it’s better to praise/reward good behaviour than to (not really) punish bad behaviour.
    
    Besides, wouldn’t it help the good companies if people were to know who they were?
    - pKp
      
      There’s a difference between “least bad” and “awesome”. I can’t speak for the situation in the US, never having been there, but here in France, all mobile providers are equally crap, with some being a little less crap in specific ways (price, customer service, etc). In that kind of situation, it’s hard to be overly positive for one specific carrier just because they’re the least bad of the bunch.
Daphne Trowbridge-Williams

Despite having done my best to avoid AT&T, I’ve had to deal with them frequently at work and organizations I volunteer with, and I have to say that I have never experienced such poor customer service with any other company I’ve ever had dealings with. The customer service reps seem to be trained in rudeness and angry defensiveness. Every person I know who’s had to deal with AT&T have their own horror stories.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Move to the UK and try EDF; you’ll be astounded at how consistently (and subtly) they can provide the worst kind of customer service.
http://www.paradea.org/notes/ Teirhan

I’ve always been satisfied by Verizon, but I’m in many ways a fringe customer: I got grandfathered in with an “unlimited” data on my current droid bionic thanks to my parents deciding that blackberry phone == phone for a college student, and my usage is… not particularly heavy.

Since I never go over 1GB of BW monthly, I don’t even particularly mind that the cap is actually something like 5GB of bandwidth a month even for an “unlimited” account. I always have had to deal with dead-zones at a few places regardless of my carrier, like my parents house, but the sudden ubiquity of WiFi calling has even fixed that problem for me.

My place of employment uses T-Mobile, and I’m similarly pleased by their service; though their insistence on labeling HSPA+ as”4G” here on the left coast enrages me beyond what is probably reasonable for a marketing thing like that. Yes, I know that even LTE isn’t true 4G, but LTE is faster than the cable internet at home so I forgive it.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend uses AT&T and despises it. My best friend from high school is on sprint, and we make fun of him for it, but his service is as good as mine when he has it. (hurr hurr hurr)
scifijazznik

I must be doing it wrong because I’ve had AT&T for several years and have had no troubles with their wireless service worth mentioning. Their DSL service and their crap modems are another story.
- philipbarrett
  
  +1 on the DSL, & in our area you “can’t” have their U-Verse internet service without signing up for TV.
dculberson

Is that a David Byrne bike rack? Why yes, I believe it is!
jandrese

For what it’s worth, my Wife has been with AT&T from back when they were Cingular. She can count the dropped calls (other than due to driving out of cell range entirely) on one hand. Almost all of those were when we visiting New York to see some plays. I know it’s anecdotal, but the dropped call thing hasn’t really been an issue for her.

We live out in the burbs though, so that may have something to do with it.
- C.J. Hayes
  
  Jeeeeez, how many fingers does that lady have?
macegr

“We take this seriously and we continually look for new ways to improve the customer experience,” it said. “But here are the reasons we think you’re all wrong and will continue to do the bare minimum.” AT&T: We Suck Only A Little More.
http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

Hello? Wha… say abou… hello? Hello?
WhyBother

Oddly, while the cell service has seemed pretty poor during what little I’ve had to deal with them, the service for a landline was pretty good. I don’t know if those two branches of customer service are related, or derive from different AT&/Cingular corporate traditions, but it was a night and day difference.
monkeygirl

My husband recently switched to Verizon after having been an ATT customer. We live in LA, which has pretty good coverage, but he had found that his number of dropped calls has skyrocketed. I’m on Sprint, and I’ve had no problems.
http://twitter.com/joninsocal Jon

Surely worst customer satisfaction for cellphone companies is akin to worst populace approval for despotic dictatorships. Its not that ones the worst; the fact that they are all appalling makes that distinction irrelevant.
awjt

Can you he–………….
http://twitter.com/webmonkees webmonkees

After a week within earshot of their overage department, I’ll admit they do their best to undue the damages caused by the rest of the service. They will sign you up for a $50 international plan *after* you ring up $850 of charges reading email in Canada, wiping it out. I dared not mention Adam Savage in their presence. :)

Other titbits: usage app, use wi-fi for data wherever possible.
ace0415

Having moved to Germany a year ago, I have a very different perspective on American telecoms at this point. Awhile AT&T may be the worst in the U.S. I can guarantee it that German telecoms would blow it out of the suck waters. I will never complain about cell service in the U.S. again, you have no idea how good you have it until you move to some place with profoundly shitty service. Constant dropped calls, plans so convoluted that even a German can’t figure them out, contracts that just go on and on and need a lawyer to get out of, and “customer service” is not a phrase that exists in German. They use “schadenfreude” instead I think.

But, everything is relative. I’ll grab my pitchfork. Down with AT&T.
GlenBlank

I’ve had AT&T land lines since they took over from Pac Bell back in the bad old days, and I’ve had AT&T cell service since my first cell phone. I’ve never had a problem.

When the squirrels ate through my phone cable, their service was prompt and professional. I travel all over all LA, and have never had problems getting a signal outside of the uninhabited part of the Malibu back country (and their coverage map acknowledges that small hole). I’ve never had a single dropped call, ever. Almost all my customer service needs in recent years have been handled by convenient, efficient automated online services.

So if this is as bad as it gets, I’ll take it.
Iqaluit

Maybe their dropped call rate is low in the whole country overall, but in New York, SF and LA is it is very high and (anecdotally) way higher than friends using Verizon experience. My dropped call rate was somewhere close to 50% for a while and AT&T told me it was due to a tower problem in my neighbourhood (I’m in the East Village in Manhattan). Of course, because they lie constantly I didn’t believe them. Turns out they may have been telling the truth and 4 months or so ago, it got better. But I still drop at least 5-10 calls a week and my family in the UK (who also have iPhones) don’t understand because they have so rarely ever dropped calls (literally once a year or so).

Now I reread the statement from AT&T I see it is a masterful avoidance from a spokesbot – “our dropped call rate is within 1/10 of a percent … of the industry leader”. If we don’t know what the rate is, that means nothing. And what defines the “leader”? Most profitable? Largest? They want us to assume they mean the provider with the lowest rate of dropped calls, but there’s no reason that is the case.

I have stuck with AT&T because I’ve had the misfortune of needing GSM because I travel internationally, and companies I worked for not having relationships with T-Mobile. For 18 months, I lived in an apartment in New Jersey with a clear view of the Empire State Building and zero AT&T coverage and every week when I called to complain I was told that I was the first to report a problem, or that it was a temporary outage. With expectations so low, now I’m happy that my phone works most of the time in Manhattan.
- http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman
  
  I’m in Poland on T-Mobile with an iPhone 4S and have only had a call dropped once so far while in an elevator, travelling (obviously) between floors inside a fairly large building. Every time I read about AT&T in the US I have to remind myself about the odd issue of them dropping calls – it is a fairly uncommon phenomenon from my POV.
Guest

Works fine for me!
Bankara

It is hard work to be at the bottom of a list of 4! Way to go, guys!
Donald Petersen

I’ve been on Verizon for about 10 years in LA, and the service/coverage used to be really good. The dead spots were kinda surprising for a while (south of Ventura Blvd things were sucky for years, and I still always lose calls on Hwy 2 between Glendale and La Canada), but I always had better coverage than my pals on AT&T. But the Warner Bros studio is one of the few places in LA where AT&T has a much stronger signal than Verizon, and since I spend all day there, it’s pretty frustrating. Anytime my cell phone rings I have to rush outside the building where the forklifts run all day (right where they shot this famous picture right here, in fact) in order to talk at all, and the signal still sucks.

As for dropped calls, they’ve really increased for me. Used to be one in every 15-20 calls, now it’s more like 1 in 4.
http://www.facebook.com/aelfscine Jon Bakos

I switched from AT&T to Verizon with the latest iPhone update, and have noticed a major difference in dropped calls. With AT&T it was once a week or more, now hardly ever. AT&T’s data was also horrifically slow in populated areas. Now on Verizon, the last time I was in DC, I was able to tether me and a friend’s computers off my 3G and we were both fine. I wouldn’t want to stream a 1080p movie off it, but it was still miles better than AT&T.
p96

I have AT&T; people get my voicemail about 5% of the time. Thus you can’t drop calls you don’t put through.
TokenCapitalist

That’s what drives me nuts here, it’s the total lack of competition among carriers. The whole industry is a cartel.
aynrandspenismighty

”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.” I wonder if they got that cannibalism problem relatively under control.
Adam S.

Calling Southwest Bell “ATT” is a bare-face lie enabled by US bankruptcy laws.
Southwest Bell bought the rights to the AT&T name and logo in a bankruptcy auction. It like letting Hertz Rent-A-Car call itself “General Motors.’

The corporate press enable this corporation rename BS just like enable all the other corporate crap.