US consumers hate their mobile phone carrier almost as much as they hate their car dealer, according to a new report from the Better Business Bureau.
According to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a US non-profit agency that tracks complaints about various businesses, cellular phone carriers generated 18,323 complaints in 2003 nationwide. Only one other industry, automobile dealers, surpassed it with 23,729 complaints. That is actually a decrease from 2002, however, when cellular carriers topped out at 21,534 complaints, the most of any industry that year. On a more positive note, the settlement rate for complaints rose from 85.4% to 89.3%
The BBB found that the number of complaints was roughly uniform across the country. In general, there were three classes of complaint: complaints about billing; complaints about the quality of customer service; and, complaints about misrepresentation or miscommunication by sales or customer service personnel.
According to the BBB, small problems with equipment or billing often ballooned into larger issues after customers spoke to customer service. Billing problems ran the gamut from unclear or incomplete bills to bills for calls allegedly made while the phone was switched off to failure of the carrier to update bills with rate plan changes agreed to by a customer service representative.
Customer service and miscommunication, however, were the largest issues. The BBB found that often times a customer service representative was unable or simply unwilling to adequately address a problem, due either to the representative's own lack of knowledge, refusal to refer matters to supervisors or other technicians, or a technical limitation of the system that prevented the representative from taking the steps necessary. Inconsistent and conflicting communication, whether deliberate or not, was also a major problem, including inconsistent statements from customer service representatives, between customer services and sales personnel, or inaccurate statements by sales personnel.
No information was available on whether or not any particular carrier did considerably better or worse than average.
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