To all of you who have mentioned that it depents on where you are, I completely agree. It also depends on where you take your phone. I had Sprint a couple of years back and returned it right away b/c it had 0 reception in my office building (old concrete thing of a wearhouse) and 0 reception in my basements appartment of the time. So eventhough it was a good phone and a decent provider in Philadelphia, it was personally useless to me.

I have posted this same question in my local forum room as well for that reason, but i wanted to get more responses on the topic from a general point of view. That is why i also posted the question here


thanks to all of you.

I just called T-mobil and told them about the great deals with rebates that exist on the web. AND GUESS WHAT !!!!!

They gave me 6 moths free service YEAH!!!!! And mind you I was not even saying that i want to change carriers, i just mentioned that amazon and some other web sites have great deals on their phones!!!

Life is good right now!!! ! that totally made my day!

 

Alltell sux around here. My wife has problems with their services. Most of her clients are with Verizon and seems to be happy with them.

 

well, as you can see, i work for Verizon, so my opinions can be a little onesided... but in all honesty, it depends on the location. Verizon provides coverage in 90% of the population, but if you are in the 10% that is not covered, you would say verizon sucks.

as far as this comment:
"AT&T has been the WORST provider last 6 months...
T-mobile has been the BEST provider for past 6 months..."
according' to a cell phone store owner...

Tmobile was not the best provider.. Verizon still activated more people than anyone. ATT and Cingular overall had the most problems and it would probably get worse.
I thought alltel was not that bad.. but after reading some of the comments, wow... i guess they do suck...

But again... it all depends on where you are...

 

You are missing the point. Total coverage and quality of service within that coverage are separate issues. Every carrier has "holes" wherein they do provide service, but it is of poor quality. This happens for a number of reasons, shitty switches / networking hardware, bandwidth ownership, service sharing, non-integrated post purchase billing systems ... etc.

Total activations (which by the way is an industry joke, there is no set standard to determine this reported number. Act/Deact/React logic is not the same from company to company, neither are churn definitions.) does not have any bearing on quality of service, which includes factors like percieved voice quality, to drop calls and customer care.

Realisticily there is no good provider. You get a group of folks from across the country into a room, and you can bet you will probably not find more than three who agree on anything.

 

Sprint PCS SUCKS. I swear if I see that black trench coat wearing MF I will kick him square in the nutz.

When I liven in NYC I would walk around a corner of a big building and I would lose signal. Also at 9:01PM I could not get a line out for 2-3 hours at a time. Cust service said that their was nothing that they could do, and that I was under contract and could not cancel w/o a $200 fee. I had to wind up getting a second cell phone and paying 2 bills for 2 months! F SPRINT!! I have T-mobile now for 3
years. It's true that my phone doesn't work everywhere, but it dose work where they say it will. TMO is also cheaper than every major carrier.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ivelina

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by steve c

 

i had been with verizon wireless for 4 years then recently switched to AT&T wireless and got a GSM phone (siemens SL56). i only switched because i wanted a GSM phone and was able to port my cell phone number to the new carrier.

i have had no problems with AT&T wireless yet (*knock on wood*) and i love my phone. i had vowed never to use AT&T service when i used to be on their network before verizon wireless and my phone was pretty much just an accessory...i couldn't make or get any calls. but apparently, they've made major improvements since then and i am pretty happy with it. plus cingular just bought them so the plans should be better.

i'm not sure how true it is that it really depends on your location. i used to believe that but verizon wireless supposedly works really well in NYC and my friend switched to vz wireless a year ago and had countless problems with it. she has the motorola t720 and i know a few people with that phone in NYC with verizon and they don't have any problems. maybe it's a crapshoot when it comes to these things...

 

just my 2 cents...but the wireless industry is one where the majority of the customers will go for the better deal...very fickle...i remember studying this back in college...

the wireless consumer is a mix of:
1. people who seek the best possible service
2. people who want to get the best deals/promotions on service or phone or both/plans
3. people who seek a type of network (i.e. GSM vs CDMA vs TDMA, etc)

therefore i dont think activation numbers necessarily tell which provide better service.

i know so many people who change their cell phone numbers every year cuz they're always shopping for the better deal. i know someone who chooses the carrier with the nicest free phone. i was with verizon wireless for 4 years and thought they had the best service without a doubt, but i wanted GSM and saw a GSM phone that AT&T had so i switched. another friend of mine switched from sprint to nextel because she wanted the cool walkie-talkie feature...even though several people told her it wasn't worth it and her call gets cut off all the time.

not very loyal, huh? but i think that's generally the attitude of the wireless consumer.

as for customer service...i used to think verizon wireless had really good customer service. what changed was what happened to me this past year. i was in a 2-year contract and had been out of it for 3 months and was paying on a monthly basis. one day i got a call on my mobile and some guy one the other side said he was a verizon wireless rep. he said they're going to upgrade my plan from East to National (i think that's what the plans are called) and that NOTHING will change except my plan will be National and I wont have to pay roaming charges. I said ok. And that's all he said. Then I get a notice in the mail from VZ which said something to the effect of... thank you for contacting us regarding our promotional offer. you are now in a one year contract and early termination will be subject to $175 early termination penalty. not the exact words, but that's the gist. the guy on the phone never said anything about a contract. if he did, i would have said no thanks. they basically tricked me into another contract cuz they probably thought i was a flight risk. so i called customer service to complain and they basically told me they couldn't do anything for me and they transferred me to their contracts dept who never picked up and the phone kept ringing and ringing...so i hung up and called again, got another rep, explained the situation and he restored my plan to my original East, month to month, no contract. after that incident i was very upset with verizon wireless and did not hesitate to switch to another carrier. i was thinking about switching already for a month but i knew i would not have a problem with the service and was considering renewing with verizon. so that pretty much made up my mind...now that's not to say AT&T has better customer service...i did have to wait on hold for 20-30 min once to change the spelling of my name cuz they misspelled it only to tell me they couldn't do it and gave me another number to call. i've had another customer service nightmare with verizon before too...all they did was transfer me around to different departments wasting my time.

 

As an example the terms for when a customer becomes a react versus a new activation are not regulated. The activations numbers presented by all of the companies are not based on the same formula.

Actually, they do. The issue has been a point of contention with various governmet agencies for the past couple of years. Whether you, as a sales person for a carrier have a "problem" with it has zero impact here.

Your status as a sales person does however, in my mind invalidate just about everyting you write, as it is based on no first hand experience and is biased towards your current employer.