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Verizon Wireless Offers Best Service, but Still Sees Problems, Survey Says

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 January 2005, 21:00 CST

Jan. 5--Verizon Wireless offered the best service in all 17 U.S. markets surveyed by Consumer Reports, but the magazine's officials said Tuesday that Verizon was simply the best of a not-so-good lot.

"It wasn't problem-free," said Jim Guest, president and chief executive of Consumers Union, the magazine's publisher. "It simply had fewer problems than other carriers."

"Even with Verizon, customer satisfaction remains low," added David Heim, the magazine's deputy editor.

Mr. Guest, Mr. Heim and others involved in the cellphone project said none of the cellphone companies has much to crow about. They said that cellphone service hadn't improved from previous Consumer Reports surveys.

Although many ads are stressing "an ever more generous bucket of minutes and other benefits, there's no question ... that there's a hole in the bucket," Mr. Guest said. "What's missing is reliable basic service that's easy to understand."

The cellphone survey, one of several telephone service articles in Consumer Reports' February issue, found that only 45 percent of those responding were "completely" or "very" satisfied with their cellphone service.

"Overall levels of satisfaction are still lower for cellphone service than for most other services we measure, on par with cable TV companies and HMOs [health maintenance organizations]," Mr. Guest said.

T-Mobile USA Inc. tied with Verizon in Chicago and placed second in 11 of the other 12 markets where it showed up in the Consumer Reports results. It finished third only in Denver, where hometown provider Qwest Communications International Inc. placed second behind Verizon.

In Dallas, Verizon finished first with 70 percent of its customers saying they were satisfied overall with its service. T-Mobile rated a 67 percent, followed by Cingular Wireless with 64 percent, Sprint PCS with 63 percent and AT&T Wireless with 62 percent.

Among the six carriers rated in Dallas, AT&T Wireless was the only one with worse than average marks for static or full circuits.

Consumer Reports surveyed 39,000 subscribers of its online site, www.consumerreports.org. A company had to garner at least 150 responses to be ranked in a city.

AT&T Wireless, which merged in late October with Cingular after the survey was conducted, finished last in most cities. Nextel Communications

Inc., which showed up in four cities, finished at the bottom in Philadelphia and just above AT&T in Boston, Chicago and Detroit.

Cingular and Sprint battled for the middle ground in most markets, below Verizon and T-Mobile at the top and above AT&T.

Mr. Guest noted that Verizon and T-Mobile, the two best-rated companies, were not involved in any mergers during 2004. The Cingular-AT&T merger, which Consumers Union opposed, and the proposed merger of Sprint and Nextel will only hurt consumers, he said.

The result of such mergers usually is "increased prices, decreased competition. It's clear that consolidation is not a type of panacea for the customer and service satisfaction problems that continue to plague the cellphone industry," Mr. Guest said.

"For example, both Cingular and AT&T had problems with overloaded circuits. We don't see how merging two overloaded companies is going to somehow un-overload those circuits. The merger is not going to improve the overall problems," he said.

Frank Merriman, Dallas-based spokesman for the largest U.S. wireless company, Cingular, didn't concede that Cingular or AT&T Wireless had had problems with capacity. However, since the merger, "we've increased spectrum and facilities that are going to give us greater capabilities to provide the service we've promised to provide."

Mr. Merriman said the survey appears "profoundly flawed" since it represents only respondents from Consumer Reports' own Internet site, rather than the general population of cellphone users.

"We don't like their methodology, and we don't care for their results," he said.

The industry in general was faulted despite falling prices, better technology and an ever-growing number of subscribers, he said. He said he was confident Cingular would do much better in a more scientific survey.

"It seems that Consumer Reports generally doesn't think much of the wireless industry," Mr. Merriman said.

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Source: The Dallas Morning News

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