In a year where AT&T was prevented from acquiring T-Mobile, dealt a lawsuit by Sprint, ran afoul with the FCC, and then got ensnared in the Carrier IQ debacle, they have to be eager to put this year behind them.
Unfortunately, 2011 isn’t over yet and it’s still got some despair in store for AT&T.
Consumer Reports released the results of their annual satisfaction survey today and, probably to the surprise of exactly no one, AT&T was rated the lowest among the four largest cellphone service providers in the United States for the second year in a row. Ranked worse than Verizon (which scored the highest), Spring, and erstwhile AT&T acquisition T-Mobile, the report deals AT&T some damaging news – and this isn’t even the full report yet so who knows what terrors lurk ahead for AT&T once the entirety of the results go public. Then again, maybe it’s old news to AT&T since they’re on a losing streak lately.
The report assesses customers’ satisfaction in areas of general service as well as customer-support experience. The full details of the report will be made available in the January 2012 issue of Consumer Reports. If you can’t wait to see all the ways in which the survey damns AT&T, consider what last year’s survey unloaded:
Over half of the survey respondents who used AT&T as a carrier owned some version of the iPhone, the Apple smart phone that is exclusive to AT&T, at least for now. Consumer Reports data, reflecting all versions of the phone, found that iPhone owners were much less satisfied with their carrier and rated data service (Web and e-mail) lower than owners of smart phones on other carriers that, like the iPhone, have a host of apps to encourage heavy data use.
“Our survey suggests that an iPhone from Verizon Wireless, which is rumored, could indeed be good news for iPhone fans,” said Paul Reynolds, Electronics Editor for Consumer Reports.
Not only did the prediction of a Verizon-based iPhone come true but Sprint customers got the opportunity to get their paws on an iPhone, as well, so it will be curious to see if the wider availability of iPhones affected cellphone users’ selection of service provider.
If you’re an AT&T subscriber, how do you feel about this report? Does it sound pretty familiar to your experience?