What cell phone company has the most complaints?
It is not easy to decide which cell phone company receives the most complaints. Such factors include the size of the total subscribers, the demographic group, geographical areas, and the nature and extent of the complaints received. Nevertheless, by referring to many different consumer polls and various indicators of cell phone carriers’ performance, certain conclusions can be made.
The most recent telecom ACSI survey which was conducted in 2021 showed that T-Mobile company has the lowest customer satisfaction among all other nationwide providers. ACSI surveys a few thousand household customers annually about service factors such as call quality, network coverage, billing, and customer support. According to their surveys, T-Mobile has a rating of 70 out of 100 with regards to customer satisfaction while their counterparts had a rating of 73 for AT&T, 76 for Sprint, and Verizon respectively.
Similarly, a Consumer Reports survey conducted in 2020 of over 200,000 customers who own cell phones also revealed low satisfaction ratings for T-Mobile compared to competitors. They were getting a scale mean on value, communication, and usability while they were getting above the scale mean on most other major carriers. It is noteworthy that complaints received from T-Mobile customers were predominantly associated with the network availability and quality. Even smaller wireless prepaid carriers such as Tracfone Wireless and Consumer Cellular were revealed to be more satisfied by their clients than major postpaid carriers in this poll.
When analyzing specific complaints to agencies like the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Common Sense Media, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a few key problem areas emerge across cell phone providers.
- Service and rate issues - This encompasses wrong charges, disagreements on service charges or the monthly plan rates, unexpected charges, and cases when it is hard to get a refund or credit.
- The coverage and quality of the network – Lost calls, signal strength, data connection, absence of a rural network, and other similar problems.
- Tough customer service issues – extremely long hold times; talking to the wrong or untrained employees; poor handling of complaints and inquiries.
- Sales and advertising – Deceptive promotions, confusing product choices and restrictions, sales coercion.
The FCC got more than 30,000 complaints in 2020 alone that involved billing problems with all the carriers. The points that were emphasized included; Charges for plan rates/features that the consumer did not agree with (36%), hidden fees/taxes (25%), being charged for services that the consumer did not subscribe to (15%), and lastly, inability to get satisfactory remedy from the AT&T Customer Service on the charges in dispute (12%). The FCC keeps records of complaints at a national level for all the telecom sectors, while state-level entities such as public service commissions also record the complaints for carriers within their region.
Although surveys show that T-Mobile customers complain more frequently about performance-related issues as compared with the other national carriers with which they were compared, no cell phone company seems to be devoid of problems that would cause complaints to run high. However, pre-paid carriers are responsible for a significantly higher number of complaints regarding high-risk sales practices and charges. They also include location and demographics; while the urban customers complain of network congestion, the rural customers complain of inadequate coverage. Some of the network challenges may however be time-bound, and events such as enhancements of 5G may increase network efficiency. However, the nature and extent of billing have not ceased to complicate the understanding of consumers resulting in complaints across the wireless industry. Even with the best carriers, there is still potential for improvement by flattening rate structures and making sure that advertising and other communications are clear.
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