Coverage Getting Worse

SAME ISSUES IN MICHIGAN, AND THEY PRIVATELY MESSAGE YOU ASKING YOU TO USE "MARK THE SPOT" APP.  WELL THEN ALL THEY DO IS TELL YOU HOW THEY IMPROVED THE PROBLEM WHERE YOU NOTIFIED THEM AND IF THERE IS ANY CHANGE IT IS WORSE NOT BETTER.  THEY HAVE BECOME A JOKE TO DEAL WITH

Same here. I live in Atlanta, but drive a truck for a living. It doesn't matter if I'm in Atlanta, Dallas, LA, or Po dunk, Wy. Same issues. And strange thing is, the more bars I have, the worst the coverage. 5 bar = no calls much less being able to open a browser. Been complaining to AT&T. They finally said it was and issue with our phones. Software or hardware issues with our Galaxy phones. Like an **** I went out and got new S8's. Now I have hundreds of dollars worth of phones that are now worth a flip due to coverage. Can't open a browser half the time. At this point I'm not sure if I should just go to Verison, [Edited to comply with Guidelines]. IMO they deliberately lied and mislead me when they told me my service was fine, and it was my phone. Besides that they are not delivering what they advertise and what we are paying for.

I totally agree with you.  I have had Cricket since 2006 because I like knowing what my bill will be every month and that the company can't add arbitrary charges to my bill.  Until approx. September 2013, I consistently had 4 bars in my house.  (I even used my phone inside my daughter's house in Jacksonville FL where Cricket didn't exist yet.  She had AT&T and couldn't use her phone inside her house, just an aside.)  

So around Sept. 2013, AT&T bought Cricket.  They didn't announce it until last year, but I know exactly when it happened because my signal immediately went from 4 bars to 1 bar, if I was lucky.  I did some checking and found that, even though in a town with over 30 towers and where Cricket is extremely popular, AT&T has only graced us with service from 4 of those towers, and that service is at the lowest tier.  And the closest one to me is almost 9 miles away, even though there is one only 1/2 mile from me.  Cricket now calls my neighborhood a "dead zone".  Tell me AT&T didn't buy Cricket to destroy their competition.  Yes, competition.  You can't go 2 miles without passing a Cricket store.

Since AT&T bought them, I have not been able to send texts with any attachments from my home, inside or out.  I will receive a voicemail but no call even shows up in the Log.  I stood right by my daughter (who is on my account!) and we tried to call one another and the calls would not go through - they wouldn't even complete dialing.  Several times a week, my phones go into Emergency Only mode for hours at a time.  That means no calls or texts.  Thank God for apps like Line that use my internet connection.  I am disabled, so without that service, I could be in trouble.  For the first couple of years, every time I would call Cricket, they would try to blame my phone and make me go through a ridiculous array of troubleshooting until one brave person finally admitted that AT&T bought Cricket.  AT&T has deliberately blocked my signal for almost 4 years and I'm still paying the same rate! 

By the way, I can prove that AT&T is deliberately squashing Cricket signals.  Remember the day of the cyber attack against their towers where almost every AT&T tower in the country was down?  Of course I didn't have service that day, but the interesting thing is that during the 10 hours their towers were down, my phone registered 4 bars again!  As soon as service was restored, my phone dropped back down to 1 bar.  [Per Guidelines:  Keep it Relevant and Appropriate]. I finally gave up on Cricket and went to Boost Mobile where I can, once again, send pics attached to my texts and make calls whenever I want to.  Why didn't I change sooner?  Because I have 5 phones for $100/month and mine is the only phone that doesn't work (none of the others live with me but theirs don't work in my home either).  I had to get Boost and pay an additional phone bill every month because I was tired of getting yelled at when I didn't receive calls and/or texts and people would have to come across town to check on me.  

I want AT&T to explain why, even though they are the oldest communication company in the world with, historically, the best engineers outside NASA, which also means they are a very rich company, why won't you get on more towers and pay for, at least, the middle tier to give your customers minimally decent service?  If they think I'm so stupid that they can kill my service with a company that was reliable and think I would ever go to them as my carrier, they are crazy.  I would go without a phone before I would ever use AT&T as my carrier.

Thanks for letting me vent.

There is no such thing as AT&T owned towers that provide priority to Cricket or anyone else before postpaid customers. That simply does not happen.

Postpaid gets priority, bottom line.

So what is being done to get our signals back to where they used to be? I checked a Towers map for Livingston, TX and there are only 3 towers for 3 separate cities. However, Verizon has over 10 towers. Do I need to switch to Verizon or is AT&T going to increase their signal strength? I've been an AT&T customer ever since I've owned a cell phone (too many years to post) and have referred all of my family and friends. Now they are all switching cell providers. I am considering it myself.

To quote the great Chris Farley "Well, la-di-frickin-da!"

As paying AT&T customers we have a right to gripe about horrible coverage. Your coverage in Orange County is probably impeccable but here in fly over country it stinks. AT&T shut down the 2G coverage and replaced it with nothing. I understand it's human nature for you and your other AT&T minions to defend AT&T and tell paying customers "go see if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence" and "time for you to move on" replies. A business telling paying customers we don't need you!!! REALLY!!!

Back in the day you went with AT&T because you wanted the best, the best coverage, the best customer service, the best quality and price wasn't an issue because you knew you had the best. Those days are long gone, what a shame.

 Wow, garylapointe, good job talking to your customers!  You're an AT&T "ACE" that didn't understand half of what I said. Or did you twist my words deliberately to make it sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about?  You want to break down my post so you can try to tear it apart?   Let’s try again…

No, I did not say they affected the number of towers in my town, what I said (and I'll use little words this time) is that they bought my company and then stopped using the towers we had like the one 1/2 mile from my home that I mentioned before and now the closest tower to me is over 9 miles away and I can't get my calls, texts, send texts or any attachments (sorry I don't know a smaller word for that), etc.  You're an “expert”, so you should understand what I said this time. They cancelled contracts on all but 4 towers out of the 30 in my town, and only pay for the lowest tier of power on those towers they kept!  Can you understand me now?  Or instead of smarting off, explain why on my Samsung S6 (not a cheap phone) that I had voice mails that came in a day after they were made for calls that never show up in my log at all, even as missed calls?  I am not stupid nor am I making this up, just because my BSEE is almost 20 years old doesn't mean I don't understand the concept, but the reality is that the service is universally getting worse when it should be light years ahead of where it was 4 years ago and all you can do is pretend it's not true and ridicule us for having the audacity to complain about it!  Our service was better when we all had flip phones, at least we had reliable phone service and it was worth the price we paid for it then.  

 Also, you work for the company but don't recall this from just a year ago? 

   http://www.smobserved.com/story/2016/06/09/news/cricket-atandt-offer-5-credit-per-line-compensation-for-nationwide-cell-phone-outage/1355.html

It affected the entire country!  Or were you not on AT&T's network yet?  That's the most likely reason... Since this happened in May, 2016 to most of the country, you’ve worked for them less than a year and/or you don't live in the United States; and you think you know this company?  It's so good to know that AT&T still has such well informed and knowledgeable employees these days.  Or is your job to go through the forums and attack paying customers.  Yes, since AT&T bought Cricket, I AM a paying customer because AT&T gets my Cricket payments.

Also, I DID explain why I stayed for so long. Because I pay for my children and my grandchildren to all have phones, you know, I help people.  Oh, that's right, from your attitude, I don't think you do understand. So I still pay the Cricket bill so they can all have phones and I now also pay a separate bill to have a working phone for myself. But at least I now have a phone company where I can actually use my phone for more than playing solitaire and as a paperweight or an alarm.  (Btw, be sure to send me more comments showing you neither read nor understood what I have said again.  You know, because this is so much fun.) 

And, by the way David606, I never asked for any kind of "priority signal", like that's even a thing. I just want the coverage back that I am paying for. Why can't we expect at least what we used to have (but it should be getting better) without being insulted by you employees?  I mean, seriously, this is the only tech industry whose service is going backwards in quality but all you do is defend that and insult us! (You obviously didn’t understand my post either.  I’m beginning to understand AT&T’s problem better.  Hmmm.)  Read this slowly so you’ll get it this time … Again, my signal went from 4 bars ALL THE TIME (4 years ago - you know, the stone age in Technology time, except for cell phone services apparently) to almost none and the ONLY REASON is that AT&T bought MY PHONE COMPANY and DESTROYED my signal!  HOW DARE YOU ACT LIKE I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT!  Back when I worked for AT&T, I’d have been fired for leaving comments like the ones you both left!

Obviously you know nothing about the company you work for.  AT&T employees used to be proud to work for Ma Bell - bet you don't remember that name either!  I worked for them when they were the biggest and best phone company in the world and we cared about our customers. You're nothing but an ignorant cell phone salesman or professional brown nose (do you get paid for trying to make customers look stupid by twisting our words and leaving non sequitur answers? [look it up])  Your answers make you sound like a child.  Amazing how much smarter you'll be in a few years when you grow up.  Reread the post before you spout off about what you obviously didn't understand!

And to the censures in parting, yes I took some shots but so did company employees.  I am highly offended by your employees trying to make me look stupid and if you take this down, I will post it elsewhere since I have it on my computer.  And it won't just be a private forum of people wanting an explanation as to why their phones don't work anymore while their bills are the same or higher and the company employees spend their time insulting customers rather than offering help.  I will post this entire forum for the whole world to see.

Smart off to me again!

To dbqer:  Thank you! I guess you can only understand me when you don't work for the company.  

And why aren't replies on here connected to the post to which we are replying?