T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless again tied for top honors in the biannual J.D. Power Wireless Customer Care Survey, which the market research firm released Wednesday. The survey measures the quality of wireless customer interactions with their wireless carriers on the telephone, in retail stores, and online. Encouragingly, the survey found that the average number of calls that a customer must make to their carrier in order to have their problem resolved decreased from 1.94 in January to 1.76 in July.
This is especially important, given that customers overwhelmingly (74%) prefer to call their carriers to get problems resolved. Echoing a study released recently by AARP, the biggest reason (45%) for customers to call their carrier continues to be billing problems. Call quality continues to be the second most ?complained about issue (31%). Alltel came in third in the survey, followed by Cingular and Sprint/Nextel. With call quality being such a big issue for consumers, TRAC encourages consumers to check in to their carriers? grace periods prior to signing a service contract.
Typically, the grace period will run anywhere from 15-20 days after service activation, during which time the subscriber can cancel service without being charged a $150 or more early termination fee. Thanks to the grace period, if the carrier's call quality is sub-par (for example, the phone doesn't get service in your home), you can cancel the service contract without incurring the early termination fee.
