At one time or another, we have all had to deal with bad cell phone service. Whether you experienced dropped calls or text messages or had problems with bad customer service, it is now just another problem we have to deal with.Last week, I dealt with this first hand. One morning, I went to make a phone call, and it didn’t go through. I didn’t think too much about it and decided to send a text message instead, which did go through. Once I got to work, I realized that my text messages and emails had also stopped. I thought maybe a tower was down or my service provider was doing maintenance, so I figured I would give it a little while before I really freaked out. By noon, I still didn’t have any service.My family has been with Sprint for more than 10 years and whenever there is a problem, my mom is usually the first one to call and complain. So taking a cue from her, I decided to call Sprint to see what the problem was.I was on hold for about 10 minutes, which is surprising considering the average wait time for a Sprint customer service call is more than 20 minutes. The customer service representative I spoke with was trying to be helpful, for the sake of his job, but the best explanation he could give me was “an influx of recent activity in the South.” Then I asked him what this recent activity was and his reasoning was that, because of the oil spill, there were more people down here and therefore more people on the networks. Really, the oil spill? That’s why my phone completely stopped working for eight hours? Sprint, I know many companies have blamed BP for one reason or another, but you can’t blame your lousy cell phone service on them. I’m not buying it.For the past two years, Consumer Reports has ranked Sprint last in its Annual Survey of Cell Phone Service. The biggest complaint customers have about Sprint is bad customer service. T-Mobile was ranked first in customer service and many customers have said it offers more services for your money than other companies.Consumer Reports calculates the responses of more than 50,000 readers across the country to determine the final ranking. They ask readers which cell phone service provider they feel has the least static, dropped calls and lack of service. It does not consider regional variations, which may alter the final outcome of the survey because some service providers offer more coverage in some regions of the country and not others.J. D. Power & Associates conducts an annual Wireless Contract Regional Customer Satisfaction Index Study, which is similar to the Consumer Reports survey, but it also focuses on location. T- Mobile ranked the highest in the Southwest Region, and Alltel was the highest in the Southeast. Verizon ranked highest in all other regions, while Sprint received the lowest overall ranking in each region.So, clearly, I should have expected bad service. Out of all the polls and surveys, not one report stated anything in Sprint’s favor. Overall, T-Mobile seemed to land within the top three on every poll or survey throughout the country. But here, I find myself in a predicament. I just signed my contract at Sprint for another two years. So it looks like I’ll be dealing with bad phone reception and service for a little while longer. Maybe by the time they fix the oil spill, Sprint will have better service, but that’s just wishful thinking.
—-Contact Brittany Davis at [email protected].