I’ve been an AT&T customer for a long time. A looooong time. Even back when I had the Telegraph Rollover plan. I’ve been with them so long, I still have support for my two-cans-with-a-string phone.
Because of this, I’m very familiar with dropped calls.
I have enjoyed Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” commercials showing the horrible, despicable and downright truthful discrepancies between the Verizon 3G network and the AT&T 3G network
Heh. There’s even a lawsuit as reported by ZDNet. The story Sam Diaz wrote is pretty funny and interesting.
Now, when it comes down to it, I really don’t care much about the Verizon map because 99.9% of the time, I’m in one of the dark blue AT&T parts. Austin is pretty well saturated with 3G coverage, and it wasn’t long ago when I had a BlackBerry 8700C phone, and it only supported EDGE anyway. Now that I’m on the iPhone 3GS, 3G coverage is more important to me, but in general I’m pretty happy with it.
Except in this one place.
This ONE, solitary intersection.
This ONE AREA where I drive every day to and from work.
THIS SPECIFIC DOT ON THE MAP WHERE I DROP MY CALL NO MATTER WHAT.
Yes, I’m sore about it. A little.
I had heard that you can report to your cell provider dropped calls or problem areas, and if they have enough reports, they’ll investigate. Who knows, they might actually DO something to fix it.
So I called in, waded through the options to figure out which one would help (hint: it’s zero, then zero again) and talked to the nice lady. She did say that yes, I can report it and confirmed what I had heard. So I reported it. She let me know that she checked on the map and there was a transition point right there where calls would switch towers, and “sometimes calls drop when switching towers.”
Thanx for letting me know.
I also submitted the following email to their support team to hopefully hit home a little more.
This issue is not related to my specific phone, but I couldn’t find the option in the drop down. This issue involves dropped calls at a specific intersection. The intersection is Anderson Mill road and Millwright Parkway in Austin, TX, 78750. I’ve driven in this area for 20+ years, and ever since I’ve been with AT&T (8+ years), coverage at this intersection is spotty and usually results in dropped calls. It does this with my iPhone (3G), blackberry 8700C(edge), motorola RAZR, and the various phones I’ve had over the years. Since I drive this every day to and from work, I can count on a dropped call at that intersection. It is very annoying. I’d love it if it could be tweaked to not drop calls every time.
YOUR MISSION, should you choose to accept it, is to also contact AT&T and let them know calls drop at this intersection all the time. If you’re not in the Austin area, just say you were talking to Wayne and got dropped, and it annoyed you greatly. If you’re not an AT&T customer, tell them you’d consider becoming a customer if they fixed that intersection. You can contact them at http://www.att.com/wireless/contact-us/ or call 800-331-0500.
With our loud Internet voice, we can bring change!
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For those who like to laugh at iPhone users, check out this video with bad words in it.
Talking to Wayne and got dropped… annoyance… or act of God?
Dave2´s last blog ..2012
Have you tried to drive really, really fast through the intersection? I have a spot like that around here but I can speed through it and keep it from dropping.
Avitable´s last blog ..If a Hilly drinks and there’s nobody around, is she still drunk?
But do you still have the thumb and little finger phone?
Sybil Law´s last blog ..Buzzed Posting
Wow. You have a cell phone?
marilyn´s last blog ..Breast Cancer Conundrum
Great post. And I know the dropped calls very well, but not with AT&T, but with Sprint (who I’ve been with for almost 7 years now). Inside our home, there are specific spots where a call will drop each and every time. And there are specific spots where I can talk for hours without the call dropping. Even had a Sprint guy at our home.. inside our home, testing this out. They attribute it to being interference in a specific spot where the calls drop, that is “beyond anything we can do to fix that”
So perhaps, this spot in AT&T is a tower switching thing or something so much more powerful than their cell towers, that it causes calls to drop in that exact spot.
Since I’m kind of an AT&T customer – http://www.banalleakage.com/2009/10/12/iphone-monopoly/ – I have logged in and told them the call dropped with Wayne Hall while you were driving at that intersection.
martymankins´s last blog ..Scooter Sunday – Season 2 Ep. 14
There was an article about this recently in the New York Times. It was part of a larger story on how companies are suing each other a lot more often now simply as a tactic for disputing each others claims in commercials and such. Good times.
Chris´s last blog ..2012 and Millenarianism
In this day and age, with a “mature” cell phone market/situation having existed for at least several years, there’s no excuse anymore for lack of coverage. Or poor-quality calls. Yet, both are common. I wish they would stop spending time on making phones harder to use (with button arrays getting more and more bizarre and further and further away from standard touch-tone arrays) and fix what is bad.
dmarks´s last blog ..Worst Holiday Specials Ever
AT@T is by far the worst company out there when it comes to service. Customer service, especially, but also in coverage. I have seen a $million in AT@T commercials this weekend, they should invest in customer service. I sent an email to their CEO and he actually responded- or at least his staff did. They claim they do not know of any service issues that are important… ha ha… no the customer is not important.. no clue… they should read blogs….