AT&T and Time Warner Cable ranked worst in customer service survey

The people have spoken in an online survey reagrding AT&T & Time Waner Cable customer service....

Via BGR News:

Pay TV, Internet and wireless service providers aren’t exactly America’s most beloved business categories. In fact, customers seem to love complaining about them constantly, and T-Mobile has found tremendous success by separating its practices from those of its rivals and portraying itself as the “Uncarrier.” Part of the reason people dislike wireless carriers and ISPs so much may be the difficulties they often experience when dealing with their customer care departments, and now AT&T and Time Warner Cable have been ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in a questionnaire asking subscribers which companies have the worst customer service in the country. The unscientific questionnaire, conducted on Ranker and unearthed by DSLReports.com, lists 50 large U.S. companies and asks visitors to vote on which among them have the worst customer service. At the top of the list with 483 votes at the time of this writing is AT&T, which is followed by Time Warner Cable with 317 votes in the No. 2 spot. Bank of America, Walmart and American Airlines round out the top-5.

Interestingly, AT&T was just ranked highest in J.D. Power’s wireless purchase satisfaction survey for the second consecutive time, and it was also awarded the top honor in the firm’s 2013 customer service study.

As for other U.S. wireless carriers and ISPs, Comcast is ranked No. 6, Verizon is ranked No. 21, Sprint is No. 23 and Frontier is No. 38.

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The C.I.A Pays AT&T $10 Million A Year For Call Data?

According to government officials, The C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company’s vast database of phone records, which includes Americans’ international calls.

Via New York Times:

The cooperation is conducted under a voluntary contract, not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the company to participate, according to the officials. The C.I.A. supplies phone numbers of overseas terrorism suspects, and AT&T searches its database and provides records of calls that may help identify foreign associates, the officials said. The company has a huge archive of data on phone calls, both foreign and domestic, that were handled by its network equipment, not just those of its own customers… 

Because the C.I.A. is prohibited from spying on the domestic activities of Americans, the agency imposes privacy safeguards on the program, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because it is classified. Most of the call logs provided by AT&T involve foreign-to-foreign calls, but when the company produces records of international calls with one end in the United States, it does not disclose the identity of the Americans and “masks” several digits of their phone numbers, the officials said. 

 Still, the agency can refer such masked numbers to the F.B.I., which can issue an administrative subpoena requiring AT&T to provide the uncensored data. The bureau handles any domestic investigation, but sometimes shares with the C.I.A. the information about the American participant in those calls, the officials said.

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