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T-Mobile tops J.D. Power customer satisfaction study - again

J.D. Power and Associates have , which attempts to measure customer satisfaction with mobile operators based on responses from over 9,700 mobile users who contacted their providers customer service departments from July through December 2010. And, for the second year running, number-four mobile operator T-Mobile earned the top ranking, with an overall score of 758 on a 1,000-point scale. Verizon Wireless came in second with a score of 743; the industry average was 739.

J.D. Power also found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that customers are generally more satisfied with their support queries if they interact with a human beingwhether over a phone or in-person at a storeas opposed to dealing with automated response systems via phone or the Web.

As more companies encourage customers to contact them on the Web to save operating costs, they run the risk of increased customer churn if the number of contacts needed to resolve a complaint or issue rises, said J.D. Power and Associates senior director for wireless services Kirk Parsons, in a statement. Switching intent is four times as high among those who rate their wireless carrier below average in customer care, so the challenge for wireless carriers is to offer an easy and efficient customer care transaction experience.

The study, currently in its ninth year, found that just over half (51 percent) of telephone contacts in the industry are resolved primarily by a service representative, rather than via automated systems. Where the industry average satisfaction level was 739, the satisfaction level for Web-based contact was just 684 out of 1,000, and automated response systems only did a little better, averaging 704. Reaching a live human being, however, had an overall satisfaction rate of 774.

The study also found customers are most satisfied with their customer service experience if they spend only a short time using automated systems, and quickly move on to a live representative. The study found T-Mobile did a particularly good job at handling calls that move through automated systems to live representatives, as well as direct calls to customer service, although T-Mobile also lead all wireless carriers amongst users seeking help online.

Snooki: George W. Bush hotter than Obama

She may haveon Monday andlast month, but “Jersey Shore” reality star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi hasn’t totally ruled out the discussion of politics.

During her Monday appearance at the Washington Auto Show, Snooki was asked to determine who was hotter: President Barack Obama or former President George W. Bush.

“I thought George Bush was pretty cute,” the Washington Post Snooki as saying. “For an old man.”

Snooki also mentioned her support for former Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

“I’ve really only talked to John McCain, and that’s because I mentioned him on my show..how, you know, he probably wouldn’t do tan taxing because he’s…pale,” Snooki said.

Read more stories from The Daily Caller

Storm turns some Super Bowl plans into Super Mess

ARLINGTON, Texas – Runways too snowy to receive airliners packed with football fans. Sidewalks too icy for cowboy boots. Temperatures too cold to distinguish Dallas from Pittsburgh or Green Bay.

Just two days before the Super Bowl, a fresh blast of snow and ice canceled hundreds of flights, transformed highways into ribbons of white and caused dangerous sheets of ice to fall from Cowboys Stadium, sending at least six people to the hospital. It was enough to turn the biggest week in American sports into a Super Mess.

The six people hurt Friday were private contractors who had been hired by the NFL to prepare the stadium for the game. One man was hit in the head, another in the shoulder. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.

Most stadium entrances were closed as a precaution. Officials raised the temperature inside the arena in an attempt to meltremaining ice.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area received as much as 5 inches of snow overnight — nearly twice its annual average —and by Friday morning downtown Dallas hotels were selling ski hats and scarves alongside cowboy hats. A winter storm warning was issued for suburban Arlington, home of the $1.3 billion stadium where the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers are to play Sunday.

"It looks like, `Oh, no, I'm back in Canada,'" said Sammy Sandu, a 32-year-old property developer from Kelowna, British Columbia. "It's just pouring down snow. Are we still at home, or have we left? We didn't drink that much last night, did we?"

Forecasters expected game day to be mostly sunny, with highs in the 40s, which would probably not be warm enough to melt all the snow and ice.

Sandu made it to Dallas with his father Thursday, but other members of their party weren't so lucky. His brother still hoped to arrive from Miami in time for the game, but a friend abandoned the trip after a flight from Vancouver was canceled.

Like much of the region, airlines were struggling to recover from a massive blizzard earlier in the week that brought up to 2 feet of snow and bitter cold temperatures to as much as half the nation.

More than 300 arriving flights were canceled at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, a hub for American Airlines. The city's smaller airport, Love Field, was closed before dawn because of snow on the runways, but it reopened by noon. Love is home to Southwest Airlines.

Andy Williams, a 51-year-old attorney from Grafton, Wis., said he was frustrated to find his American flight from Milwaukee delayed for about five hours. He was already planning ahead for the worst-case scenario.

"If this flight gets canceled, I'll start driving down tonight," he said. "Clearly it's not my first choice but, at least you're in control of your own destiny at that point."

But the chilly temperatures were not expected to faze the teams competing in the real event, nor their hardy fans, who are used to cooler climes. The temperature in Dallas on Friday stood at 20 — the same as Pittsburgh. Green Bay was slightly colder at 17.

"We deal with it very well back home," Steelers fan Alex Sax said on his way the NFL Experience fan festival in Dallas. "Here, they don't know how to deal with it. There's no plows. No salt trucks. When we drove from airport, we were the only car on the road."

Asked if the weather could affect future Super Bowl bids, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the conditions this year have been exceptional.

"We've had a winter to remember. Some would say to forget," Goodell said. "It's going to be a great weekend for us, and the weather's getting better."

The Super Bowl is scheduled to be played in Indianapolis next year and in the open-air New Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey in 2014.

Some Packers fans at Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee found themselves delayed but not completely downhearted.

James Jennings, 78, was scheduled to fly out of Milwaukee with his 44-year-old son. They were taking a charter flight as part of a package for which they paid a total of $25,000.

Jennings, a criminal lawyer from Norridge, Ill., said he had absolutely no doubt that the flight would leave as scheduled.

"At $12,500 a ticket, are you kidding me? They'd get Evel Knievel to fly that thing."

Elsewhere Friday, the bitter cold seeped into the South, where icy roads were blamed for several traffic deaths in Louisiana and Mississippi. The system extended its grip as far east as North Carolina, where freezing rain was possible.

The frigid weather also disrupted natural gas service in New Mexico and caused water pipes to burst in Arizona. Snow- and slush-covered roads made driving hazardous across Texas and neighboring states.

Greyhound spokeswoman Bonnie Bastian says the weather snarled travel through Texas, Oklahoma and parts of Arkansas and Tennessee.

By late Friday morning, 23-year-old Katrina Smith had been waiting in the Kansas City terminal for more than 30 hours. She was supposed to be in the city just 15 minutes to transfer buses as she headed from Denver to Tulsa, Okla.

"Everyone here is going to go crazy," she said.

Back in Dallas, organizers of at least one celebrity-filled Super Bowl event planned to host their Saturday celebrations inside.

DirecTV planned to host a "Celebrity Beach Bowl" in a heated tent, with a lineup of stars and athletes including Josh Duhamel, Alex Rodriguez, Chace Crawford and Hayden Panettierre.

"We're full speed ahead," said Jon Gieselman, the company's senior vice president of advertising and public relation. "The show will go on. We were prepared for something like this."

___

Associated Press writers Danny Robbins, Linda Stewart Ball, Jamie Stengle and Paul Newberry in Dallas; Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee; and videographer Rich Matthews in Arlington, Texas, contributed to this report.

Sugar Plum Fairy doesn’t want apology from critic who called her fat

New York City Ballet dancer Jenifer Ringer said Monday that she doesn't want an apology from a

"As a dancer I do put myself out there to be criticized, and my body is part of my art form," she said on NBC's "Today" show. "At the same time, I'm not overweight. I do have, I guess, a more womanly body type than the stereotypical ballerina."

Ringer said different body types should be celebrated in ballet, not criticized.

The dancer suffered from anorexia when she first joined the company. She left the company, recovered, andOnline, writers and fans , which she said surprised and encouraged her.

"It did make me feel bad about myself, but I really had to tell myself it was one person's opinion out of the 2,000 people that were there last night," she said.

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You can watch her interview below:

New York Times critic Alastair Macauley wrote in athat Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, "looked as if she'd eaten one sugar plum too many."

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He defended himself, saying that no one expressed outrage when he criticized Ringer's male dance partner for also appearing overweight. "Fat, apparently, is not so much a feminist issue as a sexist one. Sauce for the goose? Scandal. Sauce for the gander? No problem," he wrote, adding that he also has body image issues. "I am severe - but ballet, as dancers know, is more so."

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No men in our team, insist E.Guinea's women

MALABO (AFP) – Equatorial Guinea's football federation hit out on Tuesday at what it called an international defamation campaign after fresh claims that two members of its women's national team were men.

After the tiny central African nation qualified for next year's women's World Cup finals in Germany, stories which first aired several years ago that some of the players were not what they seemed were resurrected by a number of newspapers.

But in a statement, the federation insisted that "the information about the presence of two men in the (women's team) is totally without foundation."

The federation said the accusations swirling around Genoveva Agnonman and Salimata Simpaore stemmed from "an inferiority complex" among rivals after their defeats to Equatorial Guinea in recent pan-continental tournaments.

"The Nigerian press started this and it was followed by the media in Cameroon," the federation's spokesman David Monsuy told AFP.

Equatorial Guinea clinched qualification for the World Cup finals after reaching the final of the women's African Cup of Nations (CAN) that took place in South Africa earlier this month. Nigeria won the final 4-2.

They had won the previous CAN when they hosted the tournament in 2008.