The iPhone, as wonderful a device it may be (I'm writing this entry on mine) is an atrocious phone. Actually, I like the phone part just fine, it's just the amazingly bad service AT&T provides.
I get calls dropped all the time on AT&T. Moving between cell towers is an invitation to drop a call and I get virtually no service in my house. During rush hour in Chicago, when people pull out their phones to call friends and family, AT&T signal quality drops precipitously.
I'm one of those people who lives on his phone. I keep a 1,400 minute plan most months, but now and then I've made 3,000 minutes and once I got to 7,000. There are no plans for that volume, and when you get that high, wireless companies cut you all kinds of deals.
With this in mind I expected my signal quality complaints to AT&T to result in something. Two calls to customer service resulted in a service person finally requesting a "tower check" by my house - which is in a busy Chicago neighborhood. No word back after that. So I wrote an angry letter to a customer service address I found through Consumer Reports (a street address is not posted on the company website). One week later I got a letter back essentially saying "sorry, but we're not doing anything about it.
I'm really considering dropping AT&T - and my iPhone - and paying the fee for cutting my contract early. Even considering this concept hurts me. I love my iPhone, but it's just too hard to do business with AT&T's service.
AT&T: Get your crap together and fix your network.
Apple: Please eliminate AT&T's exclusivity agreement.
I'll wait another month. But come September, I think I might be going back to Verizon.
Dad, husband, MBA, homeowner, Roman Catholic, Cubs fan, media junkie and Democratic political consultant in Chicago. Drop Mike Fourcher a line at mike (at) fourcher-dot-net.
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