What do you mean by "reception issues"?
Is the phone only showing 1 or 2 bars on the signal strength meter or are you saying the call quality is crap even when the signal strength is good?
If it's the former then the only way to really test it out is to find somebody else on the same provider and see if their phone has better reception in the same place.
If it's the latter then there's probably a problem with the phone.
I have an iPhone 3GS and the call quality is really, really superb.
I'm on O2 and the signal strength around here is around 4 or 5 bars, just like it was on my previous phone.
I vaguely recall that there were issues with the 3GS call quality a couple of years ago but, IIRC, it was that in areas where there was a poor signal it would say there was no signal at all even when other phones could still get a signal.
I seem to recall that it was summat to do with the software, in which case plugging it into a PC and allowing iTunes to update the OS might sort it out... IF that is the sort of problem you're having and your OS is out of date.
*EDIT*
Thinking about it, I think the problem was that the phone would continue to display 3 or 4 bars on the signal strength meter even if you moved to an area where the signal was really poor and then you'd suddenly lose the signal when, apparently, you had good signal strength prior to losing the signal.
Basically, the phone would show good signal strength right up to the point when it lost the signal entirely.
I'm sure Apple fixed this with one of the OS updates a year or more ago.
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