is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
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My experience is just the opposite. I have been with Verizon and their predecessor since 1992 (when part of the phone was mounted in the trunk of my car). I have has always found their people to be pleasant to deal with and their service excellent.
It’s really just a question of phone service quality. I had to get a land line at home and I’ve been contemplating getting a Verizon cheap phone just to have a mobile phone that works like it’s 2011 not 1996. I live and commute between Orange County and Los Angeles, perhaps the densest population corridor in the USA, and my AT&T iPhone drops almost every single call I’m on. If it wasn’t for the other features of iPhoning I’d have been gone long ago. Perhaps the AT&T network delivers acceptable performance in other metro areas but in Los Angeles it’s a joke.
PS: On the customer service tip the single worst experience I’ve ever had with a corporation is with AT&T and their business phone/internet services. If there’s one company that I could wave a magic wand and make cease to exist it would be them. Sad.
Exactly. In the seven months since I got my iPhone 4 and switched to AT&T, I have no complaints whatsoever. I’ve never had a service issue, never had a wi-fi or 3G connectivity issue, and the few times I did have to call customer support were quick, to the point, and painless.
Their home internet service leaves much to be desired, though. Since switching from broadband to U-Verse I have noticed much better speeds (and it’s cheaper). Also, their customer service for home internet seems to be far worse than the service I’ve dealt with for wireless.
This is exactly why I won’t ever give my business to Verizon. I’ve been on T-mobile, Sprint, AT&T, Cingular, Cellular One and Verizon. Verizon without question was the absolute worst customer experience I’ve ever had from any company. They’re rude, unhelpful and arrogant. And it’s not just their mobile devision.
At home, the only choice for Internet I have is Verizon FiOS. Their router kept going out. It got to the point where I had to reset it every day. After six weeks of calling Verizon customer support once a week, dealing with them for an hour every call and getting absolutely no resolution, I googled, found a way to disconnect their router, use my AirPort Extreme directly and get rid of their crappy equipment.
Each time I called, they swore everything was fine on their end and refused to do anything. Since I’ve disconnected their equipment and gone directly to my AE, I’ve not had a single Internet connection problem.
Verizon’s customer service makes the customer service from an US based airline look like a four star French restaurant.
I had an iPhone with ATT for about 1 1/2 years. Dropped calls were a daily part of my experience with the phone. When I would call customer service, they were courteous enough…but there was nothing they could do about ATT’s infrastructure shortcomings. The best customer service experience in the world doesn’t make up for what continues to be ranked as the worst phone network. However, if Consumer Reports’s research from last month is to be believed, ATT’s customer service is no bright spot.
I have no customer service tales to tell from Verizon (except that they did a good job of transitioning me from ATT) because I have had NO problems with my phone or reception. In over 1 year, I have’t had a single dropped call.
For me, I’ll take reliable network over customer service.
I have had service with bot AT&T and Verizon and have had good and bad experiences with both. I have had Verizon’s services for the last few years (cell,TV Internet) and have had good customer svc experiences 95% of the time.
We had Verizon when we were in Seattle and weren’t that happy with it. I also remember rude customer service, unreasonable fees, and dropped calls. We switched to T-Mobile and would probably still be with them if they had initially carried the iPhone.
We’ve been with AT&T for over two years now and I can honestly say, we don’t have any complaints. But I live in Baltimore, not San Francisco or New York. I’m often puzzled when reading everyone else’s complaints. I won’t be switching to Verizon, either, especially since I just added two more iPhones to my plan.
In my experience, cell service is a commodity. Differences among all the carriers I’ve used seem minimal; switching means changing one set of problems for another. At this point, I’m sticking with the devil I know.
One other thing: I heard commentary on NPR yesterday about how flaws in the iPhone itself that Apple has been able to blame on AT&T will now be exposed with the addition of another carrier. This may put AT&T in a more favorable light.
Agreed. I have never had a more awful customer service experience than I have with Verizon. I finally grew so tired of the terrible treatment I received and paid the early termination fee. I am a happy AT&T customer and would never, ever go back!