Cell Phone Customer Service Ranked Next to Last 356
Paulrothrock writes "A recent report shows that cell phone companies are the second lowest ranked industry in terms of customer service, just above cable companies. Also, they are second only to car dealers in number complaints to Better Business Bureaus. Complaints include being charged a fee to cancel a cell phone contract for a deceased husband and being double-billed for using an online bill-pay system. I guess I've been lucky, the only problem I've had is getting reception."
Funny..... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder why... (Score:4, Interesting)
Call centers (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest problem with the line group is that ANYONE can be on it. If you can read at a 5th grade level, type at 10 wpm, and spell decently, you're on. I've heard all sorts of horror stories from the team leaders of people sitting there for 10 minutes going "umm... umm.. I don't really know.. let me give you a different number, maybe they will know.."
If call centers like ours would raise the bar on entry requirements and actually train the agents better, I'm sure we'd see less complaints.
Totally saw this coming (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist (Score:5, Interesting)
LS
Poor Business Model (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems to be a very common complaint about wireless phone, and one of the main reasons I haven't migrated to it. Seems like every person I ask says their plans' customer service stinks, but they've heard such-and-such has a good system. I'll then find someone who is on said system, and they'll tell me that theirs stinks, but they've heard another system is good. Repeat the process ad nauseum.
What I'm wondering is, is the service in the industry really this awful, or is it a "grass is greener" syndrome? Seems to me that it's the perfect opportunity for a smaller wireless company to *gasp* invest in non-outsourced, quality customer care representatives. Word of mouth will spread, and theoretically, people will say "Yes, I like the customer service on this plan" instead of referring you to another company. This will in turn lead to increased customer base, increased satisfaction, and most importantly increased profits.
Of course, then there's still that pesky reception issue to deal with...
US Cellular... (Score:5, Interesting)
They fail to understand what a "contract" is. (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, they sold me this stuff, it didn't work, and I was on a 2 year contract. In going back and forth with them for a while, they explained to me that this was an 'unusual' problem, that their GSM service was good, and that the telephone was not buggy (and perhaps I should warranty mine). This greatly conflicted with reports from fellow users of their GSM service and this Motorola telephone that I'd been reading on the Internet....as it turned out there seemed to be a great number of people in my situation.
So I called AT&T and told them our contract was at an end, and to cancel the service immediately. They of course demanded a $175 cancellation fee. I informed that they would not need this fee, as the reason for the cancellation was their failure to provide the services which were set forth in the contract, i.e. cellular telephone service. It takes a LONG TIME to explain how this works to any customer service rep. Eventually, they actually figured it out and agreed to part ways without additional costs. I consider myself lucky for not having to take them to small claims over the $175.
Tiscali (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:There's also: (Score:5, Interesting)
The service here is great (Score:4, Interesting)
I won't go into all the bells and whistles of how great the phones are &c. save to say the only limiting factor I could find was that I had to get a certain brand of phone that had dual language capabilities. Once I chose my phone, everything I got with it was in English, and not the broken English manuals and instructions I expected.
Any time I have had to talk with an operator or contact NTT directly, all I have to do is say Eigo and the person immediately switches to English.
Apparently NTT won't even hire you for customer service unless you speak English as well as Japanese.
I had a setup problem with my e-mail service on my phone, I was getting spam and wanted to know waht to do about it. I called them expecting to be shuffled around or misunderstood, but instead, the woman helping me gave me the answers I needed right off the top of her head without a stutter even though I was not doing the best job of explaining what I was trying to accomplish. In the end, she sat with me on the line and helped me to create an accept list for e-mail messages. Anything not coming from the 20 odd addresses I punched in would not be accepted by my phone. I think this is much better than any block list you can hand me, and much easier on the system side of things too. At the same time I had a question about my home internet connection, also with NTT, and instead of transfering me to another division, she again answered my questions as if she had them written on the back of her hand.
After having had to deal with Rogers and Bell in Canada , and having a nightmare of a time even getting someone who spoke English, dealing with my issues become secondary to being able to communicate, I have found the service and quality of personel here amazing.
As to TV operators, we here have to pay a tax even if we don't have a television or cable, somthing along the lines of the U.K. the only experience I have with the TV guy is when someone comes to the door looking to sign me up so they can collect the monthly tax automatically. Here, not speaking Japanese pays off. I feign ignorance and confusion repeating over and over again TV nai and they go away for a year. So far this has been my only contact with them. Now whether they have tried to contact me by phone or not, I will never know because as soon as some one on the line realises I don't speak Japanese, they usually give up, and so far no one has contacted me in English about the TV tax. I can't wait till they do, in English, so I can practice my French...
Re:There's also: (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a phone that died. It just stopped working one day. I didn't drop it, flush it, stick it up my ass, or do any of the other things they asked when I claimed it didn't work... They told me I would have to send it in and pay a $35 fee. I could get a new damn phone w/a different providor for that.
After 4 hours on the phone, 6 different CSRs, and 2 different supervisors I got what I wanted. The cheapass phone replaced for free. I still was stuck w/the original battery that gets 3 hours to a charge.
So I drive around in the Minneapolis metro and have frequent call and service drops. I have to redial numbers 10+ times after 9pm because I just can't get through. Sometimes a call will go through and will drop after a minute forcing me into an AOL-like re-dial session from 1997.
I got a T-mobile Sidekick. I have had to call them twice. Once for money back and once for changing my plan (upgrade).
No sweat, no complaints, no bitchiness, no nothing. My calls don't drop, I can get a call through on the first try, and my roaming is free.
Sorry but T-mobile doesn't suck as bad as AT&T for me.
Re:Sure this will turn into a cell bitching thread (Score:4, Interesting)
"10 Dollar Credit: -$7.24"
Re:headline misleading.. a bit :) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I wonder why... (Score:1, Interesting)
That and we're constantly having cable outages, but that's another story.
Hidden charges. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have not gone over my minutes since I got the phones, my bill is [drum roll].... $78 per month after hidden charges.
It would cost about $3 more to have the phones on 2 separate plans and they wouldn't have to share the same bucket of minutes.
I once had a phone with the same provider a few years ago and they has my SSN wrong, it took my nearly 4 months to get them to let me discontinue the service because my SSN was not the one on the account.
I was like "look, either admit it is my phone and let me discontinue service or admit it is not my phone and quit sending me the bill, but you can't have it both ways!"
I spent 6 hours on the phone the day I finally got rid of the service. One rep left me on hold for nearly 3 hours before I hung up when I asked to be xfered to someone that could credit my account, she wrote in my account that I hung up on her. I spent the 3 hours she had me on hold writing a letter to the BBB.
I recently had to upgrade my service with the company to GSM to add a second phone, I had to buy 2 phones for $300 and give them my old phone that I paid for. None of their towers have been upgraded to GSM so I paid $300 + $78/month for 2 phones that can rarely ever complete a phone call.
If people want to call me they can leave a message on my Vonage phone and I can still check my voicemail away from home. That is one phone company I don't hate.
That's about right. (Score:3, Interesting)
We were on a family plan with Verizon. After a while we realized that we were always going over out alloted minutes each month, so we decided it was time to switch to another plan. The friendly associate who sold us our phones informed us that we were allowed to switch plans any time we want. Seems fair enough right?
Wrong.
The catch is that they won't let you switch plans unless you sign another two-year contract. Unfortunately this would lock us into using our already ancient Motorola-Startacs for another two years too. We were not pleased. I almost canceled right then and there, but I discovered that the cancellation fee would be greater than just paying the bill until the contract ran out. Consequently we threw our Verizon phones in the drawer, signed on with Alltel, and canceled our Verizon plan the day the contract ran out. End of story right?
Wrong
They sent me a bill for a $400 cancellation fee even though I canceled at the right time and the customer service rep said nothing more was to be paid. I called back and they said they would take care of the problem. Unfortunately they did it for only one of the phones as they sent me another bill two weeks later for $200. This time when I called them back they started making references to "turning the bill over to outside agencies". Trust me, I was freaking angry. Eventually I got to another "nice" customer service rep that said it would be taken care of.
We'll see...
I bet that most people pay the $400 just to quit being harassed. These people a freaking crooks! It's unreal! They're threatening to ruin MY credit even though I followed the rules, had perfect pay, and did NOTHING to violate the contract!
No wonder they've got one of the worst customer satisfaction records in the business.
Contracts (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been a Sprint PCS customer for five years. I originally used them because at the time they did not require any type of 'contract'. At any rate, I went through about three phones (all were completely CRAP). Every time I purchased a new phone, I was forced to pay full retail price for the phone ( > $150.00 ) while new customers were getting a new phone for almost nothing (gratis or ~ $25-$50) for signing a 'contract' which I was not even allowed to sign in order to get the discount on the phone! This makes absolutely no sense. Anyway....when my last phone broke I went to the store and bought a new cell phone. The only decent phones they had were the ones with the new color screens.
I took the phone home and activated it on-line. First, Sprint made me change my service plan because my new phone was a 'vision' phone and I had to get a service plan compatible with my new phone (bullcrap). I got a new service plan that costs $5 more a month and I get less minutes and no new services (no, I'm not using the 'vision' services). A couple of months later, I was reading my bill very closely I noticed that one of the 'features' on my account was a "Sprint PCS advantage agreement" that doesn't expire until this September. I had no idea how it got there until I called customer service. Basically, I got a year 'contract' for paying full retail price for a crappy phone and paying $5 more a month. When I complained, they said it was in the fine writing on the website. I asked them to send me some sort of proof that I signed a contract. Of course they couldn't. The lady just kept saying that I could pay the $175 fee and get out of the contract.
I asked her again, explaining that I had been a loyal customer for 5 years and had no intention of changing my service. She refused and kept saying it was in the fine print and I should have read it when I got my new plan.
I proceeded to cancel my wife's, my mothers, my in-law's phone and the Sprint PCS phones for my business (5 phones). In all I cancelled 9 cell phones. They are horrible. They don't treat customers fairly -- not even loyal ones.
BTW: Does anyone know the laws regarding online 'contracts'. They seem a little scary to me since there is no proof that a user actually 'agreed' to something on-line, much less the context of that agreement.
Verizon is my carrier - and here are my thoughts.. (Score:4, Interesting)
For starters, the majority of people don't really consider their phone a seperate issue from the service provided by a given carrier. EG. If you use a cheezy phone with relatively poor reception and/or battery life, you're likely to blame the resulting dropped call issues on your carrier. While this isn't really fair, I think Verizon does an "above average" job of only offering people phones that work pretty well at these basics. Therefore, they manage to keep these complaints down a little bit.
Also though, Verizon seems to have a pretty good customer satisfaction policy. Despite them screwing up my billing at least 2 different times, and giving me hassles about a new phone I purchased that starting acting up while still under their warranty, they always have resolved the issues in the end. Basically, with Verizon, you'll get to talk with your share of clueless cust. service associates, just like with the other carriers, *but* unlike some of them, Verizon mandates that if you complain enough, you will eventually have your issue resolved.
The biggest thing I think any of the carriers could do to please customers would be easing up on the contracts. That's likely the LAST thing they'll ever do, though, because it's too much of a cash cow for them.
Re:Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist (Score:1, Interesting)
After going back and forth with them, daily, for over a month, they decided to audit their systems again.
The results:
1. I received a bonus of over two-thousand dollars from my workplace (which they failed to notify me of) for outstanding work troubleshooting bug-ridden source code.
2. 8 cases of Bawls drink. mmm... caffeine and guarana.
3. A turkey dinner, free -- compliments of my bank.
4. The bank manager grovelling, begging for forgiveness for over 5 minutes. Priceless.
Needless to say, I am no longer a customer of that bank. I made it painfully clear that they should pay me for my time in troubleshooting their faulty processes and spend less time fighting customers over imaginary monetary discrepancies.
Re:They fail to understand what a "contract" is. (Score:2, Interesting)
Somehow, though, a lot of small companies were suckered into signing up with our company, which was silly cuz these small companies only needed one or two lines, tops. Those small companies were at the bottom rung of the company's priority list. Shitty line service, tons of billing errors, and on and on.
But here's the thing: the biggest complaints I got from callers, time and time again, always concerned the 1- and 2-year contracts that they'd inadvertently signed to. People do not like having to stick to a contract that they willingly signed to and will do anything they can to be freed of one. Including complaining over and over and over.
In your case, I'm afraid that the company didn't refund your cancellation fee because of the legality of the contract. What I mean is, even if your service was shit-ass poor, you were still receiving some sort of signal strength, some sort of "product," however shitty it may have been, and unless your contract specifically stated a range and strength of signal over a span of time, you'd be SOL if you took that to claims court. Contracts are not written to favor customers who've been shafted with a bad product. If you'd been charged for a span of time in which your phone wasn't activated, you would have a case, because then you could dig through AT&T's system and check for the date of the activation of your service along with the span of time your phone was used.
No, you got what is known as a courtesy refund, or a "we'd rather lose $175 than deal with the publicity of an upset customer and possible retaliation thereof." Most customers DON'T get those. Call centers are designed to placate people in your situation into accepting the terms of their contract and eating their mistake.
Now, here's the insight that I think is most necessary in understanding these customer service "rankings." When people complain about bad customer service, it's commonly for two reasons:
1) the idiot on the other end of the phone is ignorant and truly underqualified.
2) you didn't get what you wanted, ie refunds, free stuff, an extension on your late bill, a voided contract.
So when I think about my experience in landline service, I think about how many customers were pissed about contract terms, and only 40% of customers were actually under a contract. Imagine a call center with 100% of its callers being stuck in a contract, and you can see the #2 reason having a much bigger effect in the "well fuck this customer service, they're screwing me!" opinion.
Me, I hate contracts with a passion, because they can put people in situations like Mr. AT&T above me and give such people no legal recourse against perfectly-worded contract gibberish. That's why I haven't upgraded my phone or changed my cell phone terms since my Sprint contract ran out. It gives me strength in my consumer/provider relationship that I couldn't dream of under a contract.
I would love to see a rebuttal, though, if in fact he did legally have legal strength over AT&T in his situation. Links to precedents?
i watched a man with his two kids standing outside (Score:4, Interesting)
that was enough to keep me away from them forever
Re:Sure this will turn into a cell bitching thread (Score:2, Interesting)
What happened was that I got a cell phone, and after a while my parents decided to get cell phones as well, so we switched to a family plan. Or so we thought. We started getting multiple bills with amounts of money owed that made no sense at all. Three times I called and after waiting for about an hour each I was assured that the problem was fixed. They finally stopped screwing with the bills the last cycle, but we still get two extra letters for my parents' cell phones with $0.00 owed.
Personally, I'm not looking forward to the merger. I hate to think how things can get screwed up when transferring information over, especially with my family's screwed up account.
But not all is bad with AWS. My service has been excellent, I have never had a dropped call, and recently they made their "national" plan into a true national, no roaming charges, plan, with free in-network calling.
---
Your hair is reminiscent of a digesting yak.
In the store (Score:3, Interesting)
If they were not such assholes, they would not have to worry.
Re:I wonder why... (Score:3, Interesting)
A week later (took me a while longer to calm down) I had my wife call, (still livid). The started the same thing put on hold. pick up the line, talk them into long distance for the home phone, put them back on hold, and hung the hell up. Yes the third time, hung up on. She called back (bless her heart) when she talked to the rep they wanted to transfer her and I shouted out "DO NOT TRANSFER US, JUST CANCEL THE ACCOUNT". It worked, the wife continued to play good cop and the rpe decided she did not need to transfer the call.
3/4 calls result in a hangup, and the 4th one was suspicously going that directoin. Who's the fodder now?
Vote With Your Money, Stupid. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do not understand why people use shitty cell phone services. If you do not like what they offer you, why do not you cancel?
I had only one cell phone contract. It was the biggest mistake in my life (well, not counting that sorority girl). As soon as they started to show me shady charges, I told the CSR that she was a cunt, then I told the manager to fuck off and then I put my phone through the wall. Of course, this happened only because my contract was about to expire within a month, but it left a good impression.
Be your boss. Always tell people to fuck off whenever you feel that they need to fuck off; otherwise, everybody is going to ride your ass. I explicitly told the manager of my cell phone service that I wanted to pay $35USD per month for national-wide service. He laughed. I told him that he was a fat asshole and let the store. Did this improve my situation? Absolutely. I feel that whenever I tell people what I really think, I do not have to have excuses in the long run. I bet if some nut heads who bring AKs to their work places did what I do, we would not have freaking office shootouts. Anger relief stops people like me from doing things that I will regret in the future. If you are angry, do not keep your emotions inside, let them know what is going on. If you sit and bitch and post your shitty messages on slashdot, nobody is going to get the fucking point. What you really should do is take all your complains, roll them up in a tight roll and shove it down managers' throats. If you a person gets 10,000 phone calls a day that say "Your service suck, we cancel!" what do you think is going to happen? What if all Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-mobile and other customers decided to send their companies down the drain?
Do not like Verizon? Call them. Tell CSRs and their managers that you fucking hate their service more than your in-laws. Complain. Bitch. Get other people to do the same and you'll make Sprint, Verizon and T-mobile better companies. Remember, all of those cocksucking bastards are after YOUR wallet. Vote with your money.
Ciao.
Re:Well what did you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny you mention that...
That is exactly how Sprint PCS started out in the business. When Sprint PCS first started in the Milwaukee area, there was one plan: $50/month, 500 minutes (no peak/off-peak differentiation, minutes were minutes), and a dime per minute after that. No contract, no start-up fee, but you did have to buy the phone outright.
They had the market licked. No contract? A simple rate plan? Holy crap! These guys rocked!
Until they slowly morphed into the rest of the then-analog carriers...first it was a $30 start-up fee, credited back over the first three months of the service...then it was phone deals with "PCS Advantage Plans" i.e. yearly contracts...then peak/off-peak minutes...soon they had given up nearly every competitive advantage they had over the competition, save one: they were all-digital.
Too bad too. When they decided that I couldn't keep my plan when I moved from Milwaukee to the east coast and wanted to charge me more for less, I canceled the service, cancellation fee be damned, and went to T-Mobile.
Try Nextel (Score:2, Interesting)
I find this puzzling (Score:5, Interesting)
Hold times are short (under 5 minutes), the CSRs are pretty competent (and they transfer you to level 2 when they know they are out of their league), and the staff is always polite.
Frankly, Comcast isn't bad either. Neither is DirecTV. I don't see what everyone is complaining about (except with Qwest - they put you on hold for an hour and then explain that their DSL network is down and will be down for the next two days).
The problem is that people expect too much. You can't expect level 1 CSRs to be able to fix every problem.
Here are my "rules":
- Act dumb, but not too dumb. If your GPRS WAP service is out, say that you can't connect to [[branded GPRS service name]] and read off the error messege. Let them run through their script and transfer you to someone who can help.
- Be polite. You get excellent results if you say "Thank You" and use a polite tone of voice. Remember, it's not the CSRs fault that your service sucks.
- Don't expect too much. You shouldn't expect a CSR to give you six months of free service because your coverage sucks. Nor should you expect to have your contract revoked.
- Play CSR Russian Roulette. If you don't get what you want, call back. You'll get a new CSR and can try your routine again. This works particularly well for scoring discounted (or free) service when you have network outage issues.
And finally, some tips about wireless:
- Don't expect too much. Your phone, particularly if it's in the PCS spectrum (most GSM, Sprint) will have trouble inside buildings, paritcularly if they are metal. Your best bets for coverage inside are Verizon or Nextel (800mhz, penetrates walls better).
- Don't buy GSM (in the US) unless you know what you are doing. I love my T-Mobile service, but it is not something that I would rely on. GSM networks in the US simply do not provide the quality of service and coverage of CDMA-based networks. You can get good deals with GSM (particularly with T-Mobile - $20 unlimited GPRS; $50 2-phone plan with plenty of minutes), but you must understand that you will not always have service, particularly indoors or in rural areas.
- Stay away from AT&T. Their GSM network is, quite frankly, crap. Not that T-Mobile's is much better, but at least T-Mobile has cheap data. AT&T's customer service is also awful.
- Stay away from Sprint. Verizon CDMA isn't any more expensive and it is far more reliable and comprehensive.
- Go Verizon if you need dependable service. Verizon's CDMA is simply unmatched in terms of reliability and coverage. I had Verizon (CDMA2000, not AMPS) service in Yellowstone National Park.
- Get a good phone. Do research. A good phone makes all the difference. T-Mobile is actually pretty decent with a 1.2W Nokia phone (Nokia 3590). With the 600mW T300 (or the Sidekick with the crappy radio chipset) it is practically useless.
- Test out your service during the free trial. T-Mobile, for example, gives you 14 days to opt-out of the contract. They are throwing you a bone here - you have the perfect chance to see whether their service is acceptable. Go to the tough locations; everywhere you would use your phone on a regular basis, call 611, and keep going through the phone tree (for T-Mobile, you can hit # every 30 or so seconds and it will read you your minute usage indefinately). Listen, walk around, and check to see if the audio quality is acceptable (or if the call drops). You don't have to pay for the minutes.
Re:I know its shitty-Crap Wars. (Score:3, Interesting)
My technique was generally to let them talk until they ran out of rage... Steer them to staying relatively on topic, but otherwise let them rant.
Once the customer is done ranting, then we can work on trying to address the actual issue. I'd take notes as they babbled, but aside from that I'd work on something else and leave them on mute except when I had to respond.
However, I was in a position where I could either help the customer, or if I couldn't, there was nobody that I'd transfer the call to, my department (corporate support) was to resolve the issue. If the call needed to go to another department, I would stand up, walk across the floor and talk to someone in person. If I did have to transfer the customer, part of my job was to call the customer back to confirm resolution.
In all honesty, I really loved dealing with angry customers: the angrier a customer is, the more of an opportunity to redeem us as a company (either to cancel/refund the account, or to make it better)
Re:Well what did you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
They're apparently not allowed to go more then 3 sentances without saying "Mr X".
It's a personal thing, but I KNOW MY FUCKING NAME, and since there are only two of us talking on the phone, I can assume that whenever they're speaking, they're speaking to me.