AT&T: The worst cellular provider on the planet?
Last month we reported on MC Siegler (TechCrunch.com) and his growing disenchantment with AT&T’s poor data and voice service. His frustration was so great, he called AT&T a “big, steaming heap of failure.”
Then TechCrunch’s founder, Michael Arrington, told his 1 million Twitter followers, “I Quit The iPhone,” after Apple apparentally denied Google Voice for the iPhone at AT&T’s insistence.
Now comes word from MobileCrunch that AT&T has changed its terms of service in its contract to preclude subscribers from joining any class-action lawsuits. Don’t worry, any change to a contract that benefits one party over the other represents a chance for the other party to cancel the contract without facing any penalties or fees. So, if you don’t like the fact that you now cannot join a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, ring ‘em up and say, “Yes, I’d like to cancel my contract, please. Here’s your rubbish iPhone back.”
After enduring what was no doubt the most frustrating weekend of cell phone service, or lack thereof, with my new iPhone 3Gs, I guess if I were AT&T, I’d be worried about class-action lawsuits too! Honestly, I had better service with my Motorola brick phone in the early ’90s.
Seriously, I was in the middle of downtown, out with four friends on Friday evening. All five of us had iPhones. All five phones showed full reception with AT&T’s 3G service, yet not one of us could make a call or receive data.
A warning to AT&T!
To a person, all five of us agreed that if Verizon is succesful next year in becoming the next iPhone service provider, not one of us would hesitate to pay the $150 cancellation fee, and pay for a new phone, just to be free from AT&T’s horrible service. And in the meantime, if something closely resembling the iPhone comes along, like the HTC Hero, I may be extremely tempted to dump AT&T and the iPhone even sooner.
I’ve been using AT&T on my iPhone. I switched to this carrier only because i bought an iPhone. My experience is not the same as this author. At&t has been no different than my other carrier that i had been with for over 7 years. I think the complaint is about cell technology. The author has some expectation that is higher than what the technology delivers. And now proceeds to write an article as though the unrealized expectation is a condemnation of AT&T service. Think further, my friend.
Bullshit. The author is DEAD-ON. I live in New York City of all places and lose calls on my iPhone 3G ALL THE TIME. Most recently yesterday as I was trying to negotiate a JOB-OFFER!!!
F>the Iphone. F>AT&T.
Bring on Verizon and lets get this show on the road.
I still want a class action against AT&T!!! I’d jump on that in a second…
This is absolutely true. I am switching from AT&T right now…I give up! When Apple checks my dropped call rates, it’s as high as 60% and most days it’s in the 30-50% range. This doesn’t even include the almost countless times that I couldn’t even make a call. Delayed voicemails almost daily along with the phone not even ringing when someone calls.
Absolutely the worst service I have ever experienced…added with the worst customer service I’ve ever encountered.
Dave – I can’t speak about AT&T, because I don’t have it, never have, and probably never will. What I can speak about is general cell service and technology, and I can say that if you have accustomed yourself to the levels described in this article, you’re getting ripped off. I have been on Verizon in the past, and their service was excellent, but expensive. About five years ago, we switched to T-Mobile, and have generally been happy with their service, and very happy with their customer service. In addition, my husband has a company-issued Blackberry on T-Mobile. It is the nature of his job that he must be able to get calls and emails 24/7. He doesn’t actually get that many middle-of-the-night calls, but when a call goes out, the company is on its knees until the Tech Gods can log in and fix whatever is broken. When his company is on their knees, so are Orbitz, Expedia, and a dozen or so other travel-planning websites. Believe me when I tell you that instant, reliable service is vital to these people, and T-Mobile comes the closest to that ideal right now, even if they don’t quite make it 100%.
I don’t think it is asking to much to be able to make a phone call on a cell phone. I left AT&T for the same reason, spotty coverage and horrible customer service.
Finally, I am not alone. I’ve been with AT&T/Cingular/AT&T for about 6 years, and I’ve had an iPhone since they first came out, and I have ONLY RECENTLY begun having the problems the article describes. Turns out so many new customers have adopted the 3Gs that the network can’t carry them all. AT&T’s suggested solution: turn off the 3G network and run it on EDGE, despite the fact that you’re paying $10 more a month for access to the (apparently semi-functional) 3G network.
I’ve had problems with AT&T service and lack of explanations or inability to signify a willingness to solve their own technical problems, but these things usually get fixed. The question is how frustrated will we be before it happens.
@Dave: Needn’t be so dismissive yet. The problems are real. If the phone tells you you have full signal strength — that you’re ON the network — you ought to be able to actually activate the network for voice or data. And this ain’t the way it used to be. Not even with AT&T.
Sigh.
Even worse is two people on AT&T trying to talk to each other! Impossible to carry on any useful conversation with sound cutting out. Since I got my iPhone people I’m talking to say, “What’s wrong with your phone?” I reply “I know! It’s terrible, isn’t it? AT&T!” I will be happy to change to another carrier when possible. I used my iPhone as an iPod touch overseas, using Skype to make international calls over a wireless network and the sound quality was great. That implicates the AT&T network, not the iPhone.
I switched to AT&T a little over a year ago when the iPhone 3G came out. I was previously on Nextel with a Blackberry. Nextel was always willing to work with me to try to fix things, namely the text message outage that was specific to Blackberry. Never really had any problems, great service, thought iDEN data was slow, but oh well.
I upgraded to the 3Gs when it came out, with no problems and then all of a sudden my visual voicemail stopped working. Not the hour delays or messages popping up a few days later, but nothing at all. I called AT&T and the business support rep I got didn’t even have an idea what I was talking about. I’ve also had days where I had full service and I couldn’t make a call, it just kept telling me call failed. I miss the service I got with Nextel, it just worked. Don’t even get me started on how AT&T charges another $20 for unlimited texting on top of the data plan while most other carriers just include it. If Verizon becomes an iPhone carrier I’m extremely tempted to jump ship.
Oh and by the way, AT&T, summer is almost over and still no MMS? What gives?
I don’t know. Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint all require $20 or so for unlimited messaging. Still BS though since text messages take up less bandwidth than a simple 1 second call. I’m thinking of switch from AT&T to cricket or boost. I could careless if I have coverage in the swamp or not. How often will I be there? lol!
In a more serious matter, I agree with the author on this one but all the companies are the same. You will have issues in different circumstances no matter which provider you go with. Sometimes I can get service under ground and sometimes I can’t get service in the building that a tower is on top of. I wish we just had the european towers
Oh, in addition, yes the AT&T customer service is horrible!
T-Mobile is a total $9.99 a month unlimited texting and emailing for all our 3 phones. One thing I tell my wife and mother, why text? Pick up the phone and call me if it is important. I CHOOSE to spend $9.99 a month to please my wife and mother, cost benifit ratio is sooooo good.
What some of you are describing is not the service providers fault. The FCC limits the power of a cell phone to just .6 of a watt because of the amount of radiation that would go into your head if if they were more powerful.
But it is legal to boost the power to 3 watts, like the old hard-wired cars phones and the bag phones because the radiation is away from the head, at the device’s antenna.
Check out this article on how to get a cell phone signal inside a building:http: //www.unwiredsignal.com/?view=how-to-get-cell-phone-signal-building.
I couldn’t agree more! Have not experienced so many dropped calls, poor reception and general bad service since the original “car phone” that was hardwired into my car…ha!
Got the iphone in Dec. 08. Things were fine until around June. The reality is I dont have a means of communication at home or work now. VM’s show up hours later. Texts that wont go thru, or worse, appear to, then find out later they didnt. Called AT&T and they said I had to go thru apple support before I could get out of the contract. She actually said apple is in control of att contracts. AT&T is an old blue chip clueless company that has no business in any kind of new technological foray.
Glad to hear my misery has company. I have one of the first gen iPhones, which actually used to work pretty well until the last six months or so. I even picked up a 3G iPhone for my wife, so that we no longer had both Verizon and AT&T bills.
I really miss Verizon. It just worked. For 8 years I was a customer. The only thing that forced me to switch to AT&T was the iPhone device itself.
Now, it’s such a miserable service that I’ll either be waiting for my contract to finish out and jailbreak this first iPhone, or else drop the iPhone altogether.
Apple, wake up. You hitched yourself to a lame mule in AT&T.
How can you even stand to buy a phone and then be stuck with a provider that can’t deliver a reasonable level of service?
I have been a Verizon Wireless customer going on 10 years. Verizon has always done what I have looked to them to do — provide me with the capacity to send and receive phone calls from my cell phone. I don’t want anything else from my mobile phone service provider.
I’ve always thought you iPhone users were dummies for grabbing at the pretty shiny new gadget put out by Apple, thinking you were hot shit for having one, and then not even being able to make phone calls! Hahahaha.
I have had it with ATT in NYC and any other City. I can’t believe it, i’ve been struggling with ATTs horrendous service for 3 years.
I own a small business in NYC and my entire staff is on ATT. I’ve tried everything to make the calls more reliable including buying everyone the latest phones (BOLD, iPhone, etc…) hoping that the “better” technology would somehow cure the lack of service.
Each time i spend $400+ on a new phone for myself or an employee, it seems that the service gets worse. It’s gotten to the point that i have TWO phones for myself. One is VERIZON (AMAZING) and the other is my ATT Bold which i use for Blackberry Messenger only and TXT between myself and my guys. I still Keep ATT because i frequent europe and i acutally like their 59.99 data plans for international. That’s the only good thing about ATT. And would you believe it, while traveling overseas, in some 3rd world country, my ATT phone roaming on another network peforms AMAZINGLY!!! It’s just the ATT network. It’s over used, under funded and just HORRIBLE!!!
I’m now fed up wth the massive overages because we have to connect 4 or 5 times to get a 2 minute phone call across. I want to bring my whole company to Verizon or Sprint but i don’t want to get hit with the massive cancellation fees from ATT that the switch will bring. What to do??
Listen, i have very powerful attorney’s at my disposal and i WOULD LOVE to initiate a class-action lawsuite on this company. Their advertising is TOTALLY misguiding (most bars, yeah right!!!) and their 3G service is non-existant on any 3G device (in fact, the only why my Blackberry even works at ALL in NYC and surrounding areas is if i manually turn off 3G, a feature just added to the BB OS).
Anyhow, back on track, if anyone wants to initiate a class-action suit, please email me at thechris1013@aim.com. I’m fed up and i’m gonna do something about this.
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