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T-Mobile is definitely out to please their customers. They (and HTC) were the first to hook us all up with Android, they pushed their service plans further and harder causing the industry to follow-suit, but for some reason their owner still wants to sell them? I’m hoping T-Mobile stays in business and doesn’t get folded into a competitor and it’s for reasons like this – they ranked #1 on the JD Power’s Customer Satisfaction Survey for a 2nd straight time.
T-Mobile ranks highest in customer satisfaction among major wireless carrier-owned retail stores for a second consecutive time with a score of 723, performing particularly well with regard to quality of sales staff and price and promotions. Verizon Wireless (722) closely follows T-Mobile in the rankings.
The survey is based on four main factors with their weight (in parenthesis):
- sales staff (49%)
- price and promotion (27%)
- store facility
- display (10%)
I thought it was interesting that smartphone owners spend longer in-store than typical phone buyers – 4 minutes longer to be exact. Pretty equal and I think there are 2 reasons that counteract eachother. I’m guessing most people purchasing a smartphone already know what phone they want when they walk in the store… obviously they’ve been reading Phandroid and reading our reviews so they’re well informed. On the other hand, activations, data plan options and teaching customers the basics of using their phone probably lengthens their stay.
It looks like T-Mobile and Verizon are the winners of this report, but we’re eager to hear what your thoughts are – obviously understanding it will vary by location, loyalty and other factors. Which I guess is why the aggregate JD Power’s reprot is so telling.
[Thanks BiGMERF]
I can only say this they may top for retail stores but when it come’s to actual service and call quality they have to be tied for bottom with AT&T.
My wife and I were with T-Mobile for nearly 3 years and couldn’t jump ship fast enough to get Verizon. The seal on the deal was a roadtrip from Washinton to California and the fact that we had little to no cell service with T-Mobile for %50+ of our trip. Verizon hasn’t let us down yet.
Congrats to T-mobile again. They have given excellent customer service to me and it matters. They have new no-contract plans, and brought out the Android phones. The other 3 (ATT/Verizon/sprint) do have good coverage, and those are better for some people (who travel outside of the city limits often)
I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with T-Mobile, and I can’t wait until my contract expires so I can switch back to Verizon.
@Jeremy
My experience was different.. about a 14 months ago I was driving truck (western states), I never had a problem with phone service.. and I was in Oregon, Washington, and all over California. There were some areas in northeren Ca (redwoods area) where I was roaming, but the phone always worked when I needed it.. We even broke down in the middle of Oregon’s “desert”, and my phone worked like a champ.
i really do like t-mobiles payment plans and how you can get a pretty good smartphone contract free with unlimited everything except minutes for a low monthly 60$. when you dont get half that when on verizon and pay over 85$ a month for there crappiest plans. and thats for 2 years!!!
Hahaha i had verizon before switching to tmobile, and let me tell you back then i was spending 530+ a month for texting charges(at the time they only had 2500txt for $25/month), and when i would call in to customer service all they would say is “if you check how many messages you send you wouldn’t have this problem”. what they didnt tell me is that they take away from your messages every time you received one. Tmobile has always been willing to work with me when charges where out of place. Congrats tmobile
@jeremy
me and my friend compared directions, him with his blackberry on verizons network and me on my nexus one with t-mobile. My friend went first his bb took us down to an alley lol then i went and we got there no problems.
They all have their advantages. A $69 plan for T-mobile, and the same plan will be $99 on verizon. Granted Verizon has more customers. Coverage and CDMA vs. GSM Roaming is a tricky question to address too – get what works in your area. All I can say is Sprint upset me, I worked for them once. They moved a lot of their customer service to countries outside of the US, cut US jobs. so you aren’t calling a US representative, and they also charged me a huge fee to break my 2 year contract.
on a side note, since our little comparison my friend dump his bb and bought the droid! lol im converting the world one person at a time whahahahahaha
@g1ton1
That has nothing to do with network but phone software features and software. Your Nexus just like the Droid has an actual GPS chip in it, while BB’s rely on GPS information relayed to them from the network. Further lets face it Google Navigation is pretty much the best Nav out there now (I love it on my Droid)
So comparing a Nexus to a BB is apples vs. oranges.
@MrXtc
I live in the Seattle Metro Area which might as well be the hometown of T-Mobile and the service up here is horrendous, constant dropped calls, echo’s on the line, only one party could hear the other, the list goes on and on. My wife and I literally moved 3 blocks up the street from where we were and our signal went from 5 bars inside to barely 2 bars outside. We called T-Mobile on it and they let us out of our contract.
Then lastly when we term’d our contract we were given our full final balance due by one of there phone reps, so we paid the full balance. and 2 months later we get a bill for 23bux in the mail from them so my wife called them, spent nearly 2 hours on the line with “customer service” only to be told that they would not honor what the other rep had told us and that they wouldn’t pull the call tape to see we we’re right and that we had to pay the bill or be sent to collection’s. Total B.S. The point being here that any other company would stand behind what an employee has said whether they f’d up or not, especially over such a measley amount but T-Mobile woudln’t. I mean its not like we got told our final bill was 100 bux and it ended up being 300 and they had to eat 200 of it. It was a stupid puny 23 dollars. The other point is that what happens if in another 2 months they decided to send me another bill that I do not owe, see where I’m goin with this.
@ Jeremy
I find it funny that you said you and your wife had T-Mobile for 3 years and couldn’t jump ship fast enough. Really? Seems to me like you held on for quite a long time.
@ Jeremy
:D
Thanks goodness for consumer choice :)
No one should stick with a carrier that does that to them.
When I cancelled Sprint, they charged me $490 total.
I think which each the advantage is:
Verizon = Coverage, more customers 4 mobile 2 mobile
T-mobile = Price + customer service – but not for J)
AT&T = Services (video calls, iPhone (LOL), 3G coverage)
Sprint = 4G in like 2 cities so far. good network.
T Mo UK is good and I have been using them for nearly 18 months :D
I’d have to rate Verizon over T-Mobile… I had so much crap with T-Mobile’s customer service and billing that I ended up forking over the $200 just to get away from them. Even when cancelling it was a pain in the ass… I talked to 4 or 5 people before I FINALLY had it canceled. It literally took a month for them to cancel it and another 2 weeks and 8+ calls to get them to refund that month’s bill (which had 0 min/texts/data usage, since I already had Verizon by this point)
I have been a T-Mobile customer for years (9) and I am very surprised they made the list this year. Their customer service has been substandard over the last year and as usual they have the worse selections of phones. The hold time on most calls more than 15 minutes I can recal two calls on hold for 40 minutes, (I know riiight?) I will say the only reason I have stayed with them is i travel a lot domestically and internationally and I always have been able to make a call.
Very surprised they got it this year because they are definitely slipping. And did I mention the selections of phones suck. How did they let Verizon beat them with the DROID and they introduced Android?
I’m happy with T-Mobile, my G1 broke touch screen, they replaced it with an open boxed one overnight. I’m happy. And I also I’m very satisfied with even more plus plan. especially 2 Android with family shared plan. Save more money than Verizon and AT&T.
I literally can look out my office window and see t-mobile’s Bellevue headquarters. I soooo much want to buy the nexus one and enjoy their very economical month-to-month rate plan. The deal breaker: I look at their coverage map. I simply can’t live with the holes. The running comment with most of my co-workers is go with Vz and you won’t be dissapointed. I have some aquaintences that have t-mob, and love them. But my sister on ATT has so many echoes on her GSM calls that I just can’t even look at the GSM spectrum. Me- I have nextel (employer provided) with attrocious coverage, but great call quality. I am desperatly waiting for a 1 Ghz android smartphone on CDMA, preferably Vz. My employer will even pay for the plan.
I’ve. Had Verizon for two years now and have been Berry happy with their Supp support. They’ve worked with me time and time again with no problems. I love my Droid!!!!
smartphones have hit the masses. I’ve seen people who are computer stupid and yet have bought g1’s or other android phones.
T-Mobile have the best Customer service I have seen so far. I have been with Orange and O2 UK previously and found that T-Mobile are always really helpful. The only drawback I find is signal some times in areas where most can get HSDPA I find some times I can only get G3 and even that can be sporadic.
T-Mobile’s 3G coverage is unacceptably thin. I would drive 20′ off the main thoroughfare and drop from 3G to Edge. I switched to Verizon and this never ever happens. Then after I switched, I paid the ETF, but my wife stayed on T-Mo, plus we kept our T-Mo@Home VOIP line. They screwed up the billing and were charging the $10 a month VOIP line $40/mo a cell phone line. It took 2 months and many calls to fix that.
I was not impressed with T-Mobile. The study does NOT mirror my experience with the company.
Well here we go
1 no carrier has 100% coverage they all will have dead spots regardless how many retards are following you..
I have T-mobile tried out Verizon had it for the 14 days returned my phone everyone I talked to said they could barley hear me dropped calls alot of bad from the best coverage carrier I went back to t-mobile have no dropped calls and never had any that I can recall.I live in the Chicago area and on the 14th this month T-mobile will have new coverage maps which improves their coverage as well as give some areas 21Mbps download speeds.
I have T-mobile and I barely have signal problems with my phone. Their costumer service is the best I have ever experienced, I had Sprint, Metro pcs and AT&T before. Their prices are also very good, I have done some plan appraisals just to compare against Verizon and T-mobile is at least $40 cheaper, thats’s without any other possible hidden charges.
So bottom line if you make a lot of money and don’t care about your monthly bill and you travel a lot then go Verizon, their coverage seems to be very extensive, even outside the US. My best friend has Verizon and he travels a lot
Congrats to T-mobile
I have a good comparison, my parents have tmobile (because they are less expensive than Verizon)and I will say the support at the store level is no where near the support I have with Verizon. My sister has a sidekick and she lost it the insurance company replaced it with a much cheaper model and her deductible is $150 (she was not told about the deductible) Once they changed their plan and forgot to add the promotional night and weekend minuets and they had huge overage (thousands of $$) she took her receipt for price plan change into the store (the store changed the plan when she added a line) and the manager refused to come out of the back room and even talk to her. Personally if it was me i would have switched but they stick with it. I guess you really do get what you pay for
@John
We stuck with TMO for a couple of reason’s, we started out with RZR’s which were horrendous phones, and at the time of our contract renewal our VOIP provider had announced they were permanantly shutting down their service. So we spoke with TMO and decided to give them a second chance (rather I convinced my wife even though she wanted to go to Verizon already)They’re a local company for us, they were affordable etc, needless to say we got 2 new phone’s were assured the issues we had in the past were due to our old phones and got their VOIP service.
It only got worse from there, the problem’s we experienced on our old phone’s expanded 10x with the new one’s, we spoke with them many times (usually in their stores) and were told random things like our SIM’s were old (which they replaced) etc but still had ton’s of issues. I do field service for a living so I’m constantly driving around the Puget Sound area, the area I drive around is all densely populated (as dense as I suppose you can get for Washington state lol) cities. Even in the metropolitan area that I drive in I constantly had signal issues, and would have all sorts of issues (that I posted about earlier) being that I’m in the field my Cell Phone is my lifeline to work. After we renewed I shopped around for mobile broadband for my laptop and decided to go with Verizon based on coverage areas etc. We wen’t on a roadtrip to California and while we constantly had no signal with our TMO phone’s my Verizon 3G had signal nearly 90% of the time, especially in area’s I didn’t have TMO.
Then when we got home we moved to a new house and as I stated earlier it was a mere 3 block’s from our old house and we lost nearly all our TMO signal, we don’t live out in the country, we live in the middle of a large city (Tacoma) and found this highly unacceptable. We contacted TMO and explained the issues we were having and that we wanted to term our contract, after about 45 minutes on the phone they let us out with no ETF as they looked at what coverage they could “guarantee” at our house and saw that it was sub-par and that there we’re no new tower’s going up in our area.
After that we went out the next day and bought Droid’s and have been happy ever since.
All coverage should improve.
.
All carriers are upgrading. They said Verizon is spending like $6 billion on upgrading their network this year. T-mobile has been building a lot of 3G towers the past year.
I switched from Sprint to T-Mo because Sprint wasn’t carrying any Android phones and I was tired of waiting. MyTouch 3G rolled out and I thought to myself this is the best timing since my contract was up anyway.
I don’t travel so I never had any problems with Sprint and same goes for T-Mo.
I was just upset because of the $100 off Oprah coupon that came out right when I bought my phone and T-Mo refused to credit my account for the difference.
Personally I think your customer service experience unfortunately depends on who you get on the other line. That’s why you need to call a few times for the same problem you’re having.
Looking at their scale, it’s a 1000-point scale. The highest (T-Mobile) scored 723. The lowest (Sprint) scored 711. The difference between the highest and lowest score is 12/1000, or 1.2%. So the best is 1.2% higher than the worst. Whoopdee-doo. Considering that the basis of this study is mostly subjective, a deviation of 1.2% is WELL within any sane person’s margin of error. I think the bigger story here is that none of the companies scored higher than a 723 on a 1000 point scale.
The biggest shame is that there are people in the world who will make buying decisions based on this.
I have Verizon and I can say I’m generally satisfied with the service and all. I’ve never had T-Mobile, or any other carrier for that matter, but I believe Verizon has great quality compared to the rest. Now that said here are my complaints with Verizon which I’m sure aren’t proprietary just to them:
Expensive plans; basically if you want a smartphone you have to pay $35 a month on top of your plan, and thats PER phone. So if my wife and I both wanted a smartphone of any kind thats $70 on top of our $99 monthly plan! But I think all carriers are overpriced in that regard anyway.
I’ve noticed some outrageous fees for the stupidest things like changing my wife to the primary on the account so we could get a discount through her work. Changing over to a family plan, etc. I know they need to eat too but isn’t it getting out of hand?
So the moral of this story is that all cell companies need to stop squeezing us for all we’re worth and give us an affordable deal on family plans, account changes fees and all that. Again, I don’t believe Verizon is the only company doing this so I’m not mad at just them as much as the whole industry. Otherwise I am very happy with the call quality and coverage that Verizon offers and now that they actually have good phones that I would actually want I see no reason to change to any other cell carrier.
Been with Tmo since ’01. Had Sprint and Verizon before that and nevered finished my contract with either due to circumstances I can’t remember. Tmo’s customer service is the best in the mobile retail industry from my experience and thats why I have stuck with them. Since then, their coverage has gotten significantly better along with their phone selections and plan options. They have a lot of good things in the works and I’m excited for them. I really hope they don’t get sold. Don’t know what I’m going to do if that happens.
It’s funny how so many people are persuaded by a “sales team” and not the service itself. If it was ranked by service, Then ATT and Tmo would cease to exist. DK wants to spin off T-Mo b/c they know it is doomed for failure. Really. Some people and their decision making process baffle me.
T-mobile is where it’s at people.
NO-CONTRACT PLANS FIRST OFF.
Seriously, I want all of you to take a second and ask yourself “where was I in life 2 years ago?”
Most of you (if not everyone) has had significant changes in your life, whether that is financial, personal, etc. in the past 2 years.
What happens when those changes effect your ability to continue paying for a phone, or using the same phone service?
When you sign a contract you are signing part of your life away to these phone company’s. They LEGALLY can f*** you over because you wanted to be anal about petty stuff like “they told me I wasn’t allowed to get away with not paying when they said I could the 1st time!” or “They were mean to me on the phone”. Personally I think we Americans are spoiled as hell and don’t realize how good we got it half the time, but I am digressing non-appropriately so I do apologize.
T-Mobile = No contracts – QUIT ANYTIME
FASTEST 3G NETWORK!!! If you think that is BS then research the facts people:
T-Mobile USA… and at roll-out they intend to offer 7.2 Mbit/s service, making it the fastest 3G network in the United States. (SOURCE = http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/TMobile-Moves-to-3G/)
ALSO TALK ABOUT A BRIGHT FUTURE WITH YOUR CELL COMPANY:
In 2009 T-Mobile upgraded more than 200 markets, covering some 208 million POPs.[23] T-Mobile is currently testing its 3.75G HSPA+ network in the Philadelphia market with plans to begin implementing HSPA+ throughout top 3G markets throughout 2010. T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network will offer up to 21 Mbit/s speeds, making it the fastest 3G network in the United States.(SOURCE = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile_USA#cite_note-22)
-(optional) Take full balance of ANY phone, split it over 24-36 months and add it to your monthly phone bill.
-UNLIMITED DATA PLAN $19.99/MONTH (I haven’t found a better deal)
-Because T-mobile were the last to upgrade to 3G, they have the newest equipment, which also means they have the fastest equipment
-Out of this world Customer service (Ex: I recently went over my minutes by 100, which sucked, I called them, explained my situation as a college student and asked them if they would allow me to split my owing to them up into 2 or 3 separate payments to make it easier for me, Instead the guy just wiped the overage minutes clean and said [after] for $10 more a month he’ll give me another 500 minutes a month, I was sold). Now you have to realize every company relies on it’s employees, who are human, to handle customer service. Chances are SOMEDAY with no matter WHAT company your with, someone is not going to be in the best mood nor be helpful whatsoever, shit sucks, that’s life. But OVERALL, Tmob’s company policies are truly the best, the way that they do their billing, how they bend over backwards for customers (again policy-wise, I realize some of you have had bad experiences with PEOPLE).
-I currently have a Motorola Cliq, 1000min/month, UNLIMITED DATA PLAN, Financed my phone, and AFTER taxes is all said and done – – – – – $70/month
…oh and I could stop the plan tomorrow if I wanted to.
Anyone care to try and beat that with their “other guys” phone service? If there is better options, please let me know cause I am all for a good deal!
i have sprint,at&t,verizon,and nextel and had the best service with tmobile they may not have as many selections of phone as at&t but i love it and iphone suckks dick i like my cliq
i meant i have had