T-Mobile has un-carried itself back to the top of J.D. Power's customers care rankings for full-service wireless carriers. The latest survey, which evaluates consumers' satisfaction with their carriers' customer service, shows Verizon and AT&T taking spots two and three respectively, and Sprint...well, someone needs to do something about Sprint.

J.D. Power surveyed 15,668 wireless customers who had contacted their carriers' customer service through various channels (such as phone support, online chat, forums, and so on) within the past three months. The companies were then rated on a 1000-point scale.

T-Mobile's rating of 828 placed it at number one in customer service, while number two Verizon scored 822, number three AT&T had 811, and Sprint staggered in with a mere 755. (One wonders what's going on over there. Are they physically attacking customers?) When J.D. Power released results on this same subject in July, the top three carriers all scored about the same, with only a two-point difference between first-place Verizon (797) and third-place T-Mobile (795).

T-Mobile says this is the fifteenth time it has topped these rankings since 2004, and being T-Mobile, it was not humble about its latest victory. In a press release, CEO John Legere attributed their ranking to the company's un-carrier-ness, declaring, "We’re primed to go totally next level in 2018!"—whatever that means.

J.D. Power pointed out that customers seem to prefer their interactions over social media channels over more traditional methods of customer service. Also worth noting is the importance of video in customer care, for when customers looking for answers to a question came across a carrier's video, that question got resolved 92% of the time. Customers also became more likely to say they "definitely will not" switch to a different carrier in the next year if they had seen a video (34%) versus those that went through an automated phone system (21%).

Among non-contract full-service carriers, MetroPCS (which is owned by T-Mobile) comfortably earned the top spot with a rating of 828, followed by Cricket (814), Boost Mobile (804), and Virgin Mobile (763). For non-contract value carriers, Consumer Cellular was far and away the most highly rated with 880, with StraightTalk (770), Net10 (760), and TracFone (741) well behind.

PRESS RELEASE