With apologies to the deceased Rodney Dangerfield, the wireless industry can’t get any respect.
Whether it’s state agencies attempting to micro-manage the industry or countless health-related lawsuits or studies attempting to link cell service to a myriad of maladies, you would think the wireless industry had red hair and was from a broken home.
Consumers Union lobbed the latest “dis” in its annual survey of wireless services-which happens to coincide with the all-important holiday shopping season. CU said less than half of wireless subscribers surveyed were completely or very satisfied with their cell service. And to rub a little hot sauce in that wound, CU noted that consumer satisfaction for wireless services ranked below such apparently despised service segments as hotels, supermarkets (who doesn’t like supermarkets?) digital cable TV and HMOs.
Below cable TV!? I’m not sure how cable television is marketed in the rest of the country-hey, I’m a wireless guy-but our local cable TV provider weekly touts rock-bottom introductory rates for service, but fails to mention anywhere what the service will cost once the introductory rate expires. Sure, wireless carriers offer too many rate plans and hide fees in fine print, but at least they show the fees somewhere and a consumer can find out what they will be paying in six months.
Now I’m not trying to defend wireless carriers-I’ve been in several bewildering situations that have made me question my current carrier choice-but the level of dissatisfaction expressed in the CU survey is a bit surprising for a service that most users wouldn’t leave their houses without, has saved countless lives and serves 70 percent of the country’s population.
Some of CU’s results could be written off by the fact that the survey encompassed less than .01 percent of the more than 180 million wireless customers in the country, and that CU readers might be a little more sensitive than the average person. But other surveys have found similar unrest.
Of course, most operators will claim that internal testing shows their network is superior to the competition. They also assert that the issues often brought up in such surveys-such as call blocking and dropped calls-are statistically negligible and improving. Then again, Mr. Dangerfield claimed a lack of respect until the very end.
