The wireless carrier worked with Bazaarvoice to give consumers the ability to read, share and submit product reviews on AT&T's Facebook fan page. AT&T has offered product ratings and reviews on its own since 2008, but claims to be the first telecom to offer the ability to review via Facebook.
AT&T's Facebook Page currently features phones such as the HTC Surround, the Samsung Focus and the HTC Aria. Users can also rate accessories. In addition to aggregating the reviews into a starred rating (on a scale of one to five stars), the site also features comments from the reviewers.
Although the site now features reviews of phones, there's no mechanism to review AT&T's service. The company recently was rated the lowest-scoring cellphone carrier in the U.S. by ConsumerReports, which surveyed 58,000 of its readers.
Although he believes AT&T's service gets a bad rap and is actually better than most people think, Roger Entner, head of telecom research for The Nielsen Co., says AT&T is wise not to let consumers rate its service on Facebook. "I think the reason they're not doing that is it turns into a feeding frenzy of people that are not satisfied with AT&T's service," Entner says.
Entner points out, however, that the type of phone can greatly affect a consumer's reception on the network, so opening up that discussion is a good idea. "From this, they'll be able to help consumers differentiate between devices that are better connected to AT&T's network than others," Entner says. "If I'm on device X, I'll have a lot more problems than if I'm on device Y."