Still connected with AT&T Wireless
Written: Dec 10 '00 (Updated Jun 03 '02)
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Pros: Great customer support, good coverage
Cons: Slightly more expensive
The Bottom Line: great service!
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| gracef's Full Review: AT&T Mobile Phone Service in Chicago |
I have been a customer of AT&T Wireless in Chicago for over two years. I first came to AT&T because of a great promotion they were offering. For the most part, I have been pleased with their service. However, when it came time to replace my phone recently, I decided to re-evaluate my selection.
My first step was to do some research, which I described in my review of the Point.com web site. After making some comparisons and talking with the salespeople at AT&T Wireless, I decided to stay with AT&T Mobile Services. The reasons were simple.
Competitive Pricing
On any given day, any wireless provider might be the cheapest. AT&T Wireless offers a wide variety of plans, so when one is doing comparisons, it’s important to compare minutes to minutes, features to features, etc. in order to find the best plan available.
Through Point.com, I found that Sprint was offering the best prices at the time. Sprint’s plans included free long distance. AT&T Wireless had some plans that did also, but it charged more. All of the other providers were more expensive though. Still, the AT&T Wireless plan was only much more expensive if I planned on making numerous long distance calls from my cell phone, which I didn’t.
What I found most interesting was that my existing plan selection from two years ago is still very competitive with new plans. In fact, my two year old plan was even better than any of Cellular One’s current plans.
Features
My needs for wireless service are simple. I need to be able to send and receive calls from anywhere. Voice mail is also necessary for those times when I’m in the pit of Union Station. (Reception is always lousy, regardless of the provider, because the underground tunnels are surrounded by tons of concrete.) The features that are available is always dependent on the phone anyway, and until I upgraded, I didn’t have a phone capable of doing much beyond my basic needs. Getting a new phone opened my eyes to the possibilities though. I now have the ability to make and receive calls. I have voice mail. But I also have call waiting, caller ID, and two way text messaging. All of these were included in my plan for free. The cooleat is the text messaging, as a person can send me email at my cell phone. I’m not sure how much I will use any of these more advanced features, but it’s nice to have them.
AT&T Wireless also has the Digital PocketNet service for wireless Internet-ready phones, but I opted to avoid this entirely by purchasing a phone incapable of using it. The reason is simple. The selection of available sites is far too limited to make it worthwhile. Many of the sites that are available are shopping sites, which would be much too tempting on that long, boring train ride to and from the city every day.
Honesty
Sometimes, I have to admit that I’m an idiot. When it comes to purchasing wireless service and equipment, I still don’t know everything. After I reached my decision to stick with AT&T Wireless, I went to one of the sales offices to select a new phone. I also wanted the salespeople to show me how the plan that I had selected two years before compared with the ones that they were offering now. It would have been easy for the sales representative to allow me to spend much more money than needed. However, she happily checked the details and told me that there wasn’t a significant difference in the plan that I had over their new plans. She also told me that she would likely not recommend signing a new contract because the benefits weren’t significant enough to merit being locked into a new one-year contract. Then, she told me that I shouldn’t buy the phone from the AT&T store. Rather, since I had completed the terms of my original contract, I was eligible for a "phone upgrade", which would be significantly cheaper.
I called about the phone upgrade, and the sales representative was right. The phone, which would have been $200 at their sales office, was only $100 through the upgrade program. What’s more, the phone came with a $30 rebate. Somehow, the fact that AT&T did not have the cheapest wireless plan didn’t matter so much anymore.
Reception
Having a reasonably priced plan with a cheap phone and nifty services is great only as long as one can actually make and receive calls. For a time, I was considering going with Sprint because of the price difference. However, I changed my mind quickly when I started talking with friends and colleagues who were Sprint customers in the Chicago area. "How’s service?" I would ask. The response was invariably, "It’s mostly good." Every person with whom I talked that was a Sprint customer complained about dead spots throughout the area. Almost every one talked about how they could talk as long as they weren’t at either work or close to home. When I started comparing where all of these people lived and worked, it seemed that there were large areas where the Sprint service just didn’t work.
Meanwhile, I compared my own personal experience with AT&T Wireless with friends who were also customers. One friend, a project manager with IBM, raved about how she traveled all over the US and still had good service, regardless of whether she was coming to or from Chicago or in the middle of nowhere in Indiana or Iowa. Another consultant friend who travels extensively throughout the greater Chicago area commented on the fact that he rarely has reception problems. My personal experience, especially with my new phone, is similar. Regardless of whether we’re in the Chicago area or traveling to see relatives in Ohio, our service is always reliable.
Customer Support
The quality of customer support is always a major factor in my decisions. I expect that all services have a problem at one time or another. Customers encounter difficulties. The true value of a relationship is decided in those moments when things go wrong. In this area, I give AT&T Mobile Services in Chicago a big thumbs up!
The first time that I needed Customer Support was two years ago, within a month of signing up for the service. One Friday afternoon, as I was returning home from my job in downtown Chicago, I got off the Metra train, got into my car, and then realized that my phone was not in my purse. I immediately panicked. I was sick about the expense of the lost phone, but I was more concerned about someone finding the phone and using it. My first call upon returning home was to AT&T Wireless. Even though it has been over two years, I still remember how kind and understanding the customer service representative was. She immediately put a hold on my account, so that anyone who attempted to use the phone would be blocked from dialing anywhere but to AT&T. I then called Metra, but no one had turned in the phone. They gave me a number at Union Station (the destination for many Metra trains in the area) where I could check later, but I didn’t have much hope of ever seeing the phone again. Then, two days later, on Sunday morning, I received a phone call from AT&T Wireless. An employee of Metra had found the phone and called AT&T, who then called me. Though AT&T could have saved time and effort by just giving my contact information to the Metra employee, they opted to protect my privacy and call me instead. I appreciated that. But I appreciated the fact that AT&T didn’t charge any service fees for removing the block from the account. The representative said that, since this was my first such incident and was obviously new to the area, she was going to waive the fee. I couldn’t believe my good fortune!
I didn’t need customer service again until I upgraded to my new phone. The phone was supposed to be pre-programmed with my cell phone number, codes, etc. prior to being shipped. For some reason, it wasn’t. It took a few calls to the support line to get it configured properly. Throughout the process, I was impressed with how well the representatives knew the products and with the fact that they were always enormously patient. On my last call, I said, "I know that I should be ashamed for doing this, but I’m calling because I’m too lazy to read the manual. How do you do this?" If I was on the other end of such a call, I’m sure that I would have been annoyed. But this fellow just laughed and said, "Well, if you didn’t call, I would just be sitting here and doing nothing." He then walked me through the steps that, had I bothered opening the manual, I could have figured out myself. He then proceeded to tell me a few more features about my phone that I couldn’t have discovered through the manual. Given my experience with AT&T Wireless customer service, I would say that whatever AT&T is paying these people isn’t enough!
The AT&T Wireless web site also has some great Customer Support features. Registered users can view and pay their bills online. One nice feature is that the payment can be configured so that it happens automatically. Registered users can also view the details of their selected calling plan and add or remove features that are available for that plan via the web site. When I checked out these pages, I was surprised to find that I was eligible for free services that I had never used, including upgraded voice mail and two way text messaging.
When in Chicago, choose AT&T Wireless!
I cannot attest to the quality of AT&T Wireless service in all areas of the country. In the places I have been, it’s been great. In Chicago, it’s been excellent. With the level of service, discounts for long-time customers on equipment upgrades, and great reception, I just may be a customer from life.
Further Reading
Great phone for elves and other small people!
http://gracef.epinions.com/elec-review-2195-1A4B88B6-3A3FD506-prod4
Author's Note
I wrote this review well over a year ago. I am happy to say that my service is still exceptional!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 49.99 per month
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gracef
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Location: Lost in Texas
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