Verizon, Sprint Lead In Customer Satisfaction While AT&T, T-Mobile Fall

NEW YORK — Sprint Nextel Corp., once dead last in customer satisfaction among the Big 4 national wireless carriers, now has the happiest subscribers, along with long-time leader Verizon Wireless, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index also shows tentative declines in customer satisfaction at the other two big carriers, AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA. That comes as AT&T has agreed to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion in a deal that could close next year.

The acquisition could make AT&T and T-Mobile customers even less happy. Claes Fornell, professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan and the designer of the ACSI survey, said it is common to find that customer satisfaction drops after a merger.

Cellphone-company mergers bring struggles to combine billing systems, customer support and other functions. Snags can frustrate consumers. One reason Sprint had the worst score in the industry for many years was its disastrous merger with Nextel in 2005.

Sprint and Verizon Wireless both rate a 72 for customer satisfaction in the ACSI survey, which polled 8,000 households in the first quarter. For Sprint, that's a big jump from a score of 56 three years ago, while Verizon's score has been steady. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has made improvements in customer service a centerpiece of his turnaround plan for the troubled company.

Sprint's score includes subsidiaries Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile, which sell plans without two-year contracts.

ACSI gave AT&T a score of 66, down from 69 last year. It's the company's worst score since 2006, the year before it started carrying the iPhone. It's the lowest-ranked of the four national carriers after being surpassed by Sprint last year.

T-Mobile's score was 70, down from 73 points last year.

Both declines are within the survey's three-point margin of error. T-Mobile's score is also within the margin of error of Sprint's and Verizon Wireless' scores.

T-Mobile's financial statements also hint that subscribers are unhappy, since they show an increase in "churn," or the percentage of subscribers leaving every month. It's the smallest of the four national carriers, and part of the reason it's selling itself to AT&T is that it's finding it hard to compete with the bigger ones.

AT&T customers, on the other hand, are more loyal than their low satisfaction score suggests, and have shown only a slight increase in their propensity to leave.

The very happiest wireless subscribers are those who get their service from smaller carriers like TracFone Wireless Inc. and U.S. Cellular Corp., according to ACSI. That category scored a 77 in the survey.

The survey was developed by the University of Michigan but is now run by a private company, ACSI LLC.

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Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

Comments

[lywrm12]

11:18 AM on 07/15/2011

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[Unlimited Pcs store]

09:50 AM on 07/06/2011

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[bryanbello]

12:02 PM on 05/18/2011

Well i just got Verizon like 3 weeks ago & like we didint had all the money to pay for the phones, so the guy that sold us the phones actually helped us pay the phones with his own money lol... then we payed him back(:

[floatsfast]

11:48 AM on 05/18/2011

I've been with Boost Mobile for a long time. When I've had issues they would find someone to help me if the person answering couldn't. $50.00 a month for unlimited calling in the US, unlimited texting (I'm not really a texter) and catch up with my e-mails while at work. I currently own the Sanyo Incognito phone which isn't bad and does what I need one for. They had 3G before AT&T did but am waiting for 4G to hit my area. Boost is a better deal than the company that now owns it, Sprint.

[zooperman]

11:17 AM on 05/18/2011

Truth is, they are all terrible. Some are just more terrible than the others. So the trick is to try and pick the least terrible of the batch. This is not the same as being satisfied. It is simply giving up and making the best of terrible options. If a company actually DID come up with REAL, high quality, respectful, last-beyond-the-contract-signing, customer service, it would not take long for the masses to migrate over to them.

[RonGallion]

03:03 PM on 05/18/2011

I agree, I was with AT&T for years, and the service got worse and worse. I have a cell tower in sight of my house and I still did not get a strong signal, and there are many dead zones. So I went to Verizon and I always have a signal, they are not the cheapest or have stellar service but it's the less of many evils.

[toutelemonde]

10:30 AM on 05/18/2011

Seriously? Verizon? They're absolutely awful! I had them for 10 years, and FIRED them 5 years ago. It was like a festival of dropped calls. US Cellular is SOOOO much better!

[vitawayne]

08:09 AM on 05/18/2011

If AT&T et al would take some of the millions they spend on TV advertising telling us how great they are, and spend it on customer service, we might start believing them. An even better idea would be to close their customer service department altogether and outsource it to Amazon.com, a real customer service oriented company.

[wordssmithrv]

03:54 AM on 05/18/2011

It’s not any merger with AT&T. It’s that the Bell System is alive and well. They cannot bury their abusive practices under remanufactured logos and names. They are still heathens.

[jaynay]

03:43 AM on 05/18/2011

Metro PCS should be BELOW bottom!!! What a piece of garbage service!!!

[bryanbello]

12:02 PM on 05/18/2011

metro is pretty good, the phones are wack & too expensive!!

[Denizio1]

03:41 AM on 05/18/2011

I have been with AT&T since 1995 with my cell phone. I was with them when they had local hardline service in Denver and they sold out. I had them as my cable company in Denver and they sold out to Comcast. Then they sold their cell phone service to Cingular. And now they are back again as my cell phone service. I don't leave them; they leave me. But, for the most part, I have been happy with the service. I've had a few issues with them but they always tried hard to resolve whatever problems I had. I can't ask for more than that.

[Jacque Smaque]

11:51 PM on 05/17/2011

T Mobile should be the absolute bottom. Their forced updates destroyed 3 MyTouch phones that my family has and they would not do a thing to help. They offered phones at full price or a new contract after ruining them. All 3 of the phones were 1 month out of warranty and they have the utter arrogance to not help. I can't wait to get away from that abusive slimy company.

[lcm1067]

11:21 PM on 05/17/2011

I;m shocked that T mobile only dropped 3 points...wow. They truly suck.

[tandmmcelwee]

10:48 PM on 05/17/2011

Let me get this straight, they polled roughly .000075% of AT&T and Verizons customers and think this amount of customers speaks or equals any kind of a consensus, especially when you factor in each carriers best and worst geographic coverage areas. In english, that means they polled 8000 consumers out of 94,000,000 and determined these incredible statistics. Please don't get caught up in all this hype. Let me know how the other 93,992,000 consumers feel about each carrier and then get back with me.

[falcon38a]

10:41 PM on 05/17/2011

All the phone companies need to lower their prices. The same for cable companies who have gotten out of control.

[gdzilla2]

10:19 PM on 05/17/2011

We had sprint for over ten years and each year the service got worse. Dropped calls, no service in a lot of places I traveled, lousy customer service. We switched to ATT and have had no problems except one time the tower was down. I have called customer service a few times with questions and always got a rep that spoke perfect English and was polite and helped me resolve the issue. I think no matter which phone company you choose, some will love it, some will hate it. Oh, I have never paid for a phone with ATT but we did with sprint.

[jgitch]

05:13 AM on 05/18/2011

I wholly agree! Sprint is also abysmal when it comes to supporting military and their families. We had problems with Sprint when my husband PCS'd a few years back and we received no cell service at the new post; and recently a friend of mine discovered that Sprint had been charging her for whole months of service instead of prorating them when her husband came home on leave from deployment and she would temporarily reactivate his phone. My family has now had AT&T for about 3 years and the customer service has always been helpful and easy to understand (they speak unbroken English!), and they have always prorated out phone bills for the months that my husband has been home on leave and we have reactivated his phone.