I remember when Consumer Reports nearly put Audi out of business because of the "unintended accelleration" problem that their model 5000 supposedly had. They even had 60 Minutes do an expose' on it. Every other major automotive publication in the US and around the world wrote rebuttles about this, with none of them able to recreate the problem. Turns out the research was at fault and the results were wrong. I haven't listened to Consumer Reports since.

PhonemanJ said:
I remember when Consumer Reports nearly put Audi out of business because of the "unintended accelleration" problem that their model 5000 supposedly had. They even had 60 Minutes do an expose' on it. Every other major automotive publication in the US and around the world wrote rebuttles about this, with none of them able to recreate the problem. Turns out the research was at fault and the results were wrong. I haven't listened to Consumer Reports since.

There was a independent 3rd party report that came out saying the same thing. AT&T worst network followed by tmobile, sprint then verizon. About 4 months ago.

Link to 3rd party report??

I read it 4 months ago, i will look, my employer sent it to me, they do this study every year

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/05/05/att-dropping- ... »


CNN Money.com reports that AT&T came in dead last among the country’s four largest carriers for dropped calls in a March survey of 4,040 smartphone users. Verizon fared best with only 1.5 percent of their customers losing their calls. Sprint was the second most reliable carrier, with 2.4 percent of calls dropped, and T-Mobile the third, with 2.8 percent of calls dropped.

Obviously, we want to push ahead of Verizon and be No. 1, but No. 2 puts us in a good position.

Thats interesting. I wonder how many of those surveyed were iPhone users...because anyone thats been paying attention the last 2 years knows the iPhone drops calls when a normal at&t phone wouldn't. I think it would be a more accurate report if it was comparing blackberry to blackberry since they make phones for every provider. Or htc vs htc etc...

I'm all about getting down to the truth but its easy to poke holes in a lot of these studies.

dude we have 2 AT&T call centers here, care and collections. I have had 2 family members working for them, the network stinks believe me. Thats a major call driver for them. its not a secret.

I'm sure customer service deals with complaints all the time...thats what they are there for. All I'm saying is that if you are going to do a carrier comparison you should be comparing the same manufacturers of handsets on different networks. Since the iPhone is exclusive with at&t and notrious for poor radio performance in shouldn't be lumped into the same tests. Some third party companies have even refused to use the iphone in their own independent network tests due to shoddy radio performance. On a different note. I'd encourage any potential customer to utilize their 30 day trial and if you aren't satisfied with your service then LEAVE. If you are a current customer who drops calls and aren't satisfied then LEAVE.

Honestly, speaking for the area im in (raleigh nc), i port more ppl to Sprint from at&t than anyone else. And maybe 2 outta 10 ppl had iphones with at&t but they all complain about the coverage and dropped calls. Again this could just be my area but hey...

True...thats why I'm saying that people should vote with their feet.

There was a time when the BBB was an excellent gauge of a business and it's focus on the customer. Perhaps there's still a few places and industries where the BBB is still effective. But as customers (in general) became more and more entitled, the BBB found itself fighting businesses for issues that lacked in common sense. Customers practically wanted a business to give them the keys to the store when they didn't get their way.

The BBB probably tried to filter out those people, at first, but over time that seems to be the majority of people complaining to the BBB. I know, from my experiences resolving issues with the BBB in the past, I had to ask them on several occasions if a particular scenario made any sense to them. Usually, it...
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"If the A+ can be bought having the lowest number of complaints cannot, unless you're paying off individual customers."

Incorrect. Companies that pay membership shakedowns...err...dues have resolved complaints removed from their profile. 20/20 did a story on this just a few weeks back. Consumer Reports accepts no advertising dollars. They don't target their readers to take surveys either. I'm sure when Sprint was at the bottom of the list you weren't talking about how unreliable CR was or is. The BBB is a bad joke.

That's my point exactly. No one was complaining about Consumer Reports when it Sprint on the bottom. Now at&t is and every one is all CR sucks! blah blah blah.

Thats because sprint did suck! You still aren't considering the fact that 70% of people surveyed carry a phone that is notoriously sucky as a phone! Its not indicative of at&t's network quality.

And AT&T, Verizon, and T-mobile don't suck? PLEASE. If AT&T didn't have Apple's dumb phone we probably wouldn't see c-sat so low. We also wouldn't see subscriber numbers so high.

I think that's the lot that AT&T has drawn with the iPhone. They sold 5.2 million iPhones in Q3 of this year, 3.2 million in Q2, and 1.6 in Q1. That's 10 million iPhones in the first nine months of this year. I haven't bothered to look at how many they've sold in 2009, but they always sell quite a few of them.

With so many being sold, you have a large number of customers with that phone experience. With a random questionnaire or poll, there's no telling how many iPhone users you're going to get. It could be a lot, or it could be a little. In any case, if you have a concentration of customers with complaints (and remember, complainers are much more likely to speak up than a more satisfied customer), the iPhone can't help but skew any...
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iPhone customers in general are self-righteous idiots anyway for the most part. They seem to think they somehow live on a higher plain of existence than everyone else, where everything should be thin, shiny, and have the Apple logo plastered all over it.

I don't champion any of these types of surverys regardless of who's on top (or bottom). My point in posting the BBB results is that they're all crap.

A college did a survey about a year and a half into the iraq war and found that a majority of americans believed that saddom hussane was directly involved in the planning of 9/11 and wmds had been found in iraq.

The fact that people believe these things doesn't make them true.

You can't discard the scientific method and get real results when you're dealing with technical issues. That's why if I was going to look at performance of cellular networks I would look for well designed studies, not target a specific demographic of magazine readers and ask them their opinion on the subject.

Amen brotha!