Consumer Reports Ratings are Out----Verizon top carrier in 14 outof 20 cities, T-Mobile top carrier in 3 cities

oklaman wrote:
> Sprint might want to think about investing some $$ in customer service.
---

Yes, the difference in Sprint vs. Verizon behind closed doors is
Verizon is still supported by the Union.

http://www.cwa-union.org/

---

› See More: Consumer Reports Ratings are Out----Verizon top carrier in 14 outof 20 cities, T-Mobile top carrier in 3 cities

>
> Sprint is a wireless company?????????????

---

No Sprint is a Communications Company.

you might want to double check that web site concerning union support...
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
oklaman wrote:
> Sprint might want to think about investing some $$ in customer service.
---

Yes, the difference in Sprint vs. Verizon behind closed doors is
Verizon is still supported by the Union.

http://www.cwa-union.org/

On 2006-12-06 20:35:18 -0500, [email protected] said:

> http://www.cwa-union.org/

I detest unions.

So what have we learned from all this chit chat? Basically that every
company has its better parts, and has areas in the country where they
are very strong. From a personal standpoint, as a customer service
representative, I find the thing that needs to be worked on the hardest
by Sprint to be the amount of notes that are left in accounts. You
have no idea, until you are the rep dealing with a customer, how
frustrating it is to have absolutely NO idea what the rep before you
did, because the note reads something like this.. "cust called in
about their account" nothing about what on the account they called in
about, what they did inregards to information to the customer, etc...
There are strides being made however, In the department I work in, we
are required to state why the cust called, what the issue they were
having was, what we did to resolve it, and what if any information was
given. over the long run, this will help improve cust service from
both sides of the phone, as we 'as reps' can actually communicate
clearly with the customer with some intelegence, as to what has taken
place.. sorry for the rant, but i had to get that out of my system.

As a customer of both T-Mobile and Sprint, in the area I live in,[Kasas
City] Both are very good as far as coverage is concerned. If you are
wanting best prices for plans, go with T-mobile, or find a Sprint
employee and ask them for their emal address so you can use it to sign
up for the SERO plans available. If you are wanting data products, and
speed, sprint is the bomb.




SMS wrote:
> Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:
>
> > In short, I would rate, based upon my or aquaintance experience as :
> >
> > 1. Verizon
> > 2. T-Mobile
> > 3. Sprint PCS
> > 4. Cingular
>
> I have a lot of friends and relatives in the Twin Cities area, and they
> all use Verizon, after trying other carriers.. One friend lives west of
> the metro area out near Hamburg, and the only thing that worked when I
> visited them last year on their farm was AMPS. Cingular is hopeless in
> the Twin-Cities, as the CR survey showed.
>
> I think that it's rather amusing where CR states "our subscribers may
> not be representative of the U.S. population as a whole." While true, it
> also makes the CR survey even more valuable, since they're surveying
> people with higher education levels, and higher incomes, that understand
> the differences and why they exist. With such a huge statistical sample,
> there is an extremely small margin or error in the results, less than
> 0.5% if the entire population of subscribers in the U.S. (around
> 220,000,000) is used. If the 43,000 responses were divided by 20 cities
> equally, this would be 2000 responses per city, the margin of error
> would be less than 2%. No one can argue with these results.

"dafydd" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> So what have we learned from all this chit chat? Basically that every
> company has its better parts, and has areas in the country where they
> are very strong. From a personal standpoint, as a customer service
> representative, I find the thing that needs to be worked on the hardest
> by Sprint to be the amount of notes that are left in accounts. You
> have no idea, until you are the rep dealing with a customer, how
> frustrating it is to have absolutely NO idea what the rep before you
> did, because the note reads something like this.. "cust called in
> about their account" nothing about what on the account they called in
> about, what they did inregards to information to the customer, etc...\

I work on billing and CRM software development, and can empathize with what
you go through.

It's a tough decision, when dealing with such a myriad of issues. On one
hand, it's nice to provide structured fields that a CSR must fill in. Take
that a step further and they merely choose from pick-lists. And then as soon
as you lock it down that much there is undoubtedly a significant percentage
of calls that don't fit the structure.

So sometimes--and I am not fond of this--you are back with simple,
unstructured, notes entry. This requires strong policy-and-procedure on the
work-flow side to ensure it's being used adequately. Making it simply a
required entry, without effective policy to go along with it (including
monitoring) results in what you see: a lot of worthless comments in notes.
What a waste of valuable information that could have--should have--been
captured properly during the calls.

All that said, I go *out of my way* to instruct Sprint CSRs (well, any
company's CSRs) to note my account. I usually ask that it's been properly
annotated at least twice. Even with this, 75% of the time (when I need to
call back) I find the call was not properly noted. That is just plain
unacceptable, IMO.


--
Mike

In alt.cellular.sprintpcs SMS <[email protected]> wrote:
<snip>
> 220,000,000) is used. If the 43,000 responses were divided by 20 cities
> equally, this would be 2000 responses per city, the margin of error
> would be less than 2%. No one can argue with these results.
>

I am sure John Navas can argue with them ... in fact, I am sure he already
has.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse
Key Fingerprint: D281 77A5 63EE 82C5 5E68 00E4 7868 0ADC 4EFB 39F0

Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:
> In alt.cellular.sprintpcs SMS <[email protected]> wrote:
> <snip>
>> 220,000,000) is used. If the 43,000 responses were divided by 20 cities
>> equally, this would be 2000 responses per city, the margin of error
>> would be less than 2%. No one can argue with these results.
>>
>
> I am sure John Navas can argue with them ... in fact, I am sure he already
> has.

Many people don't understand, or do understand but lie about, the
margins of error in surveys like this. They'll claim that 43,000 surveys
out of 200,000,000 qualified respondents is not valid, because "gee,
what if those 43,000 respondents happen to be all biased one way or
another. It doesn't work that way of course. You can get a very low
margin of error with a relatively small sample. In reality the CR sample
was extremely large, and even when you break it down by city, as they
did, the sample was still large.

dafydd wrote:
> So what have we learned from all this chit chat? Basically that every
> company has its better parts, and has areas in the country where they
> are very strong.

Actually we have not learned that at all. Two companies stood out all
over the country, and two were very weak all over the country.

On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:56:20 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>I think that it's rather amusing where CR states "our subscribers may
>not be representative of the U.S. population as a whole."

What actually "rather amusing" is how you try to explain away the
admitted bias in CD surveys.

>While true, it
>also makes the CR survey even more valuable, since they're surveying
>people with higher education levels, and higher incomes, that understand
>the differences and why they exist.

There's no evidence of that.

>With such a huge statistical sample,
>there is an extremely small margin or error in the results, less than
>0.5% if the entire population of subscribers in the U.S. (around
>220,000,000) is used. If the 43,000 responses were divided by 20 cities
>equally, this would be 2000 responses per city, the margin of error
>would be less than 2%. No one can argue with these results.

On the contrary -- that's "voodoo statistics", wrong on virtually all
counts.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:23:06 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>dafydd wrote:
>> So what have we learned from all this chit chat? Basically that every
>> company has its better parts, and has areas in the country where they
>> are very strong.
>
>Actually we have not learned that at all. Two companies stood out all
>over the country, and two were very weak all over the country.

Differences were actually relatively small and not terribly meaningful:

As a group, the carriers still leave much to be desired, Consumer
Reports editorialized.

They scored only 66 on a scale of 100 for overall satisfaction. ...

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:21:34 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:
>> In alt.cellular.sprintpcs SMS <[email protected]> wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> 220,000,000) is used. If the 43,000 responses were divided by 20 cities
>>> equally, this would be 2000 responses per city, the margin of error
>>> would be less than 2%. No one can argue with these results.
>>>
>>
>> I am sure John Navas can argue with them ... in fact, I am sure he already
>> has.
>
>Many people don't understand, or do understand but lie about, the
>margins of error in surveys like this.

Either you don't, or you're being deliberately misleading.

>They'll claim that 43,000 surveys
>out of 200,000,000 qualified respondents is not valid, because "gee,
>what if those 43,000 respondents happen to be all biased one way or
>another.

The problem is self-selected sample from a non-representative universe,
a problem that size cannot overcome.

>It doesn't work that way of course. You can get a very low
>margin of error with a relatively small sample.

Actually not.

>In reality the CR sample
>was extremely large, and even when you break it down by city, as they
>did, the sample was still large.

But still suffering from the above defect.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

In article <[email protected]>,
John Navas <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:23:06 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
> wrote in <[email protected]>:
>
> >dafydd wrote:
> >> So what have we learned from all this chit chat? Basically that every
> >> company has its better parts, and has areas in the country where they
> >> are very strong.
> >
> >Actually we have not learned that at all. Two companies stood out all
> >over the country, and two were very weak all over the country.
>
> Differences were actually relatively small and not terribly meaningful

i can see why cingular would try to spin it that way given that they
looked so bad in the study which showed quite significant differences.

i suspect some low-end types will actually believe that spin.

a lot of people are going to smirk when they see one of those
cingular billboards asserting fewest dropped calls, particularly if
they are driving with someone whose cingular phone has no signal
whatsoever.... something that happens quite often in the new york
metropolitan area and connecticut.

On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 18:23:39 -0500, "james g. keegan jr."
<[email protected]> wrote in
<[email protected]>:

>In article <[email protected]>,
> John Navas <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:23:06 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
>> wrote in <[email protected]>:
>>
>> >dafydd wrote:
>> >> So what have we learned from all this chit chat? Basically that every
>> >> company has its better parts, and has areas in the country where they
>> >> are very strong.
>> >
>> >Actually we have not learned that at all. Two companies stood out all
>> >over the country, and two were very weak all over the country.
>>
>> Differences were actually relatively small and not terribly meaningful
>
>i can see why cingular would try to spin it that way given that they
>looked so bad in the study which showed quite significant differences.

Wrong on both counts.

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

In article <[email protected]>,
John Navas <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 15:56:20 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
> wrote in <[email protected]>:

> >With such a huge statistical sample,
> >there is an extremely small margin or error in the results, less than
> >0.5% if the entire population of subscribers in the U.S. (around
> >220,000,000) is used. If the 43,000 responses were divided by 20 cities
> >equally, this would be 2000 responses per city, the margin of error
> >would be less than 2%. No one can argue with these results.
>
> On the contrary -- that's "voodoo statistics", wrong on virtually all
> counts.

john, you're going to have a hard time shilling for cingular if you
continue to demonstrate your ignorance of statistics.