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Wireless Service Complaints Mixed

FCC Complaints Decline; ConsumerAffairs.com Complaints Up 9%

February 22, 2006
Did cell phone complaints tumble in the last quarter of 2005? The Federal Communications Commission says they did, but complaints to ConsumerAffairs.com increased by 9% from the third to fourth quarter.

The FCC reported that consumer complaints about wireless service fell by 28% -- from 6,873 in third quarter 2005, to 4,956 in the fourth quarter. Complaints filed with ConsumerAffairs.com over the same period increased by 9%.

ConsumerAffairs.com Wireless Complaints
Company	Q3	Q4
Cingular	172	141
Verizon	94	78
Sprint	87	91
T-Mobile	44	78
Tracfone	47	96
Totals	444	484

"Increasing customer satisfaction is the top priority of the wireless industry," said CTIA - The Wireless Association President Steve Largent. "In just the two plus years that I have been at CTIA, carriers have invested more than $40 billion into the wireless network."

If the FCC figures stand up under scrutiny, it would mark an important reversal from previous years.

Complaint data obtained by Consumers Union from the FCC showed that Cingular and AT&T Wireless, which merged last year to form the nation's largest wireless phone company, had the worst combined complaint record for 2004. AT&T Wireless alone has had the worst complaint record two years running, Consumers Union said on its hearusnow.org Web site.

The FCC accepts complaints but does not routinely publicize complaints by carrier. Consumers Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the 2004 figures. Similar figures for 2005 are not available.

Using the 2004 figures, Verizon had the lowest number of complaints per customer among national carriers, and among all the carriers, relatively few complaints about service quality and billing.

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