Almost a year ago, Alltel started a new campaign that claimed they had the most reliable network in the country.
The commercial for this new idea featured a man driving home from work in a horrible storm. He calls his wife to tell her he will be late.
She is just about to warn him not to pick up any hitchhikers because a madman is on the loose when his cell phone dropped the call.
The camera scans over to the passenger seat and there is the madman.
Alltel then went on to say that if the man had been on an Alltel phone then the dropped call never would have happened.
How nice it would be if that was true, but sadly it is not.
An informal survey of Alltel’s customers showed that a majority said that they had a call drop at least once each day and a small number of these people said that they had problems with every call that they made.
One customer named Lynn said, “I am so used to dropped calls that I would not know what to do if it didn’t happen.”
Another Alltel subscriber named Carrie said, “All of my calls end up getting dropped. It seems like it got worse when they started saying they were ‘the most reliable network in America’. Then when I go to the store to get them to fix it, the people there tried to blame it on me.”
What does Alltel plan to do when their customers end up with dropped calls?
According to the Alltel web site, “The Alltel network covers more area than any other wireless carrier, and we’re confident in its reliability. In fact, we are so confident that we’re the only carrier that offers an automatic minute back if you ever drop a call on our network.”
This is a nice plan, but what good does it really provide the customer who gets their call cut off.
The minute back does not relieve any of the frustration that comes from having a call disconnected in the middle of a conversation.
It also does not help to connect people who are cut off during an emergency call.
Would the minute back get someone help faster that was stranded beside the road with car trouble and their call was disconnected?
No, it would not.
The only way the minute back would provide any benefit would be if the caller goes over their allotted minutes for the month.
A more sensible way to compensate for the frustration and inconvenience of dropped calls would be if Alltel offered a dollar off of the customer’s bill for every call that was dropped due to Alltel’s ineffective service.
This would be of more use to the customer than a minute back would be.
One would wonder why Alltel does not implement a plan like that.
The reason is quite simple.
If Alltel promised to give a dollar back instead of a minute then they would lose money.
If what the customers surveyed said is any indication of the quality of service the rest of Alltel’s customers received then Alltel would be giving each customer around $30 a month credit on their bill.
All cell phone companies have some form of this problem, but Alltel is the only company that promises that it is the most reliable network in America.
Despite all their promises, Alltel is not capable of keeping them but they are still so confident with their network they promise to give a whole minute back on the bill if a call is ever dropped.
With a lot of their customers experiencing at least one dropped call a day, that doesn’t sound too reliable and of what real benefit is the minute back?

Author