One of the things you should carefully consider when choosing a wireless carrier is their customer service. You should check in how easy the wireless carrier is to contact, the quality of the service provided, etc. Of course, everyone has an opinion, and should you depend on such hearsay to make your decision? Are there any hard facts out there that you can use to help you make an informed decision? Yes. Keep reading to learn more about methods to ensure you pick the right carrier so that you will be assured that you have good service when you need it, and also to learn where to go when you need service from your carrier.

One such place to help you learn about the different carrier’s service is J.D. Power and Associates, a well known company that conducts independent customer satisfaction surveys. They have a page dedicated to Wireless Service Satisfaction that you can look at. J.D. Power just put out this press release discussing the fact that T-Mobile is the top-ranked wireless carrier in terms of customer satisfaction.

A good resource to check out is Consumer Reports’ Cell Phone website. Consumer Reports depends heavily on the input of their subscribers, and they rank Verizon as being the best overall carrier throughout the country, but they also do mention that Alltel and T-Mobile are close runner-ups. Sprint and Cingular are mentioned as being the worst overall. You need to be careful, because it appears that these rankings are for a number of issues, and not specifically for quality of customer service. More information can probably be found if you are a subscriber.

Another resource you have is to Google the terms “customer service” and the name of the wireless carrier you are considering. Quickly scan the first few pages of the results. You’ll be able to get a feel for the customer service quality by the number of hits mentioning excellent or terrible customer service. I tried this with the names of all four national wireless carriers (AT&T/Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon), and it was easy to see that according to Google search results, Sprint appears to have very poor customer service, whereas the other three carriers seem to be balanced between positive and negative experiences.

AT&T/Cingular
AT&T’s support website seems to have a good selection of information, including forums where you can talk with support representatives, search for issues similar to yours, etc. AT&T offers many ways to contact them for assistance, including email, chat, phone, and in person. Their phone support can be reached by voice at 1-800-331-0500, and by TTY at 1-866-241-6567.

Sprint Nextel
Sprint’s support website seems to be very search-centric, and may seem limited only because they encourage you to log in so that they can provide you with more specific support for your particular device. They have a customer-focused blog/forum, and can be contacted for assistance in a variety of methods. Their phone support can be reached by voice at 1-800-SPRINT1, and they do not seem to have a dedicated TTY number.

T-Mobile
T-Mobile’s support website requires you to choose a specific phone or service to get more information. They do not seem to have a customer forum, but they can be contacted by email or phone. Their phone support can be reached by voice at 1-800-937-8997, and their 1-877-296-1018 TTY number is open daily from 5 am to 10 pm Pacific time.

Verizon
Verizon’s support website offers demonstrations of internal pages such as your billing page and your account page, etc that you will see when you become a customer. They do not seem to have a customer forum either, but they have a variety of ways to be contacted. Their phone support can be reached by voice at (800) 922-0204 everyday of the week from 6 am to 11pm, but there does not seem to be a dedicated TTY number to reach them.