karlkrandall@sbcglobal.net wrote:
> Cingular ranks low, and identical to JD Power rankings earlier this
> year, SprintPCS ranks lower.
>
> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine...lphones05.html

It wasn't a customer service survey, it's their annual survey of carriers.

While it's not surprising that Verizon ranked first in 14 out of 20
areas, and second in the rest, I'm surprised that T-Mobile beat them in
three cities. No doubt T-Mobile's policy of discouraging new sign-ups
for people with no coverage at their home and work locations plays a
part in their good ratings. Alltel has always been a good carrier in the
cities that it serves, and it does well in roaming because it's CDMA.

As I predicted, Verizon did decline in their ratings over last year. In
last year's survey, Verizon was top-rated in 17 out of 18 metro areas,
this year it's only 14 out of 20, with a tie in a 15th area.

In some cities the differences are small, only one or two points
difference, but in many the differences were significant, i.e. Alltel
and Verizon were 14 points ahead of Cingular in Phoenix. Verizon
continues to be the best carrier in the San Francisco Bay Area by a wide
margin, with the three other carriers tied for 2nd through 4th, seven
points behind Verizon. This result echoes the experiences of all the
users I know personally, though some have chosen Cingular because they
want to roam internationally with their U.S. number.

It's pretty amusing that Consumer Reports joined the chorus in
criticizing Cingular's "fewest dropped calls" ads, since it's
demonstrably untrue, only Sprint had any cities with more dropped call
than Cingular, with Verizon and T-Mobile having the fewest dropped calls.