Verizon Wireless, Alltel and T-Mobile lauded by CR

Verizon Wireless earned another round of kudos from Consumer Reports’ annual survey of wireless carriers, but Alltel Corp. outpaced other carriers in two new markets included in this year’s results.
The survey evaluated service in 20 markets around the country, based on nearly 43,000 online survey responses from Consumer Reports subscribers.
Alltel was tops in Cleveland and Tampa, Fla., which Consumer Reports included this year for the first time. Verizon Wireless dominated in most of the surveyed markets, but T-Mobile USA Inc. earned first place in Denver, Seattle and St. Louis, Mo. Besides Cleveland and Tampa, Alltel also placed first in Phoenix. Verizon Wireless, Alltel and T-Mobile USA were given praise for responsiveness to customer complaints and questions.
“We’re not in that many major markets,” noted Andrew Moreau, Alltel’s vice president of corporate communications. But in the three major markets where Alltel was competing with the other national carriers, the company came out on top in the rankings, he said.
“That was fantastic news for us,” Moreau said. “I think it really shows that Alltel can, and has, competed everywhere.”
He added that Alltel has made an effort in recent years to polish its customer service, and the Consumer Reports piece noted that the “customers in the survey did recognize that we’re really doing the right thing in responding to their needs.”
Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and Sprint Nextel Corp., however, didn’t feel the love from Consumer Reports. The magazine reported that for Cingular, “static and busy circuits were widespread problems, as they have been in our previous surveys,” and that Sprint Nextel “had more dropped calls than other carriers.”
Consumer Reports even took a rather pointed swipe at the largest U.S. carrier’s “fewest dropped calls” advertising campaign, saying that it had found Cingular’s network performance was only average.
“We’re very disappointed in the research methods they used,” said Cingular spokesman Clay Owen. He noted that Consumer Reports typically does actual tests of the products it recommends-such as the head-to-head comparisons of the performance of washers and dryers, laundry detergents and wrinkle creams, which were also featured in the magazine’s cell phone issue. However, when it comes to rating wireless service, the company relies on surveys of its online subscribers and asks them to recall any problems they’ve experienced with their cell-phone service.
“That is not a valid sampling, it’s not a valid measure of how the network performs and so I think they’re giving a very false impression of the industry as a whole and Cingular specifically,” Owen said.