Reliability and Service Awards 2006

Haymarket Media’s PC Authority magazine has announced the results of its mammoth Reliability and Service survey. The comprehensive survey ran for three months, covered 142 product lines and saw 8500 opinions given on tech products and services available in Australia.

What makes this survey so special is that it is based on the magazine’s feedback alone. It is the biggest and most-comprehensive tech survey ever done in Australia and CRN is publishing the results: warts and all.

“The response blew us away,” said the survey’s architect, Labs Editor, Nick Ross. “Normally you can expect some 4000 people to respond to surveys like this but we almost doubled that with 8500.”

It wasn’t simple either as every product and service was rated by asking multiple questions regarding their reliability, post-sales support and customer satisfaction – for a product to even qualify for an award.

“The standout result must be Telstra,” said Ross. “In most cases we found that ‘losing’ products could be described as ‘mediocre’, but the only word we can use to describe Telstra’s performance was ‘dreadful’.

Indeed, in the Best Internet Service Provider (ISP) category, out of more than 1600 Telstra BigPond customers, only 54 percent said they were satisfied or very satisfied with customer support. Only 28 percent said the same about value for money and 26 percent said they were very dissatisfied with the value on offer.

With the Online Shop category, “the general consensus in Australia has always been that you simply can’t trust online shops. Our survey paints a different picture,” said Ross.

Indeed, if you combine the ratings of the online shops with those of regular ‘bricks and mortar’ stores (like Harvey Norman), the winning ‘brick’s and mortar’ shop, Jaycar, finished 15th overall. Harvey Norman itself finished 36th out of 37 with ‘average’ results.

“The joint-winning shops in our Online Retailer award, PlusCorp.com.au, Secret.com.au and MegaPC.com.au, all saw 92 percent (or more) of customers satisfied or very satisfied with customer service, delivery accuracy and value for money. It shows online stores in Australia are far more mature than many people give them credit for,” Ross noted.

However, he warned, “don’t take this as a blanket recommendation. There’s a lot of these shops operating and they’re not all good.”

Following is an abridged version of the PC Authority report.

ISP

Winner: Internode
Highly Commended: Westnet

PC Authority was very interested to see the ISP results, not only because almost 8000 people voted in this category, but because it’s a survey like this that is the best way to judge which ISP you should plump for. And our results put a whole bag full of virtual, caffeinated cats amongst a great many excitable pigeons. In the key customersatisfaction question of “Would you recommend your ISP to someone else?” results swung from a winning 97 percent of respondents saying yes to a dreadful 50 percent.

And there are no prizes for guessing who achieved that dubious honour. Telstra BigPond drew more respondents than anyone else at 1600. Of these, a poor 28 percent said they were satisfied or very satisfied with BigPond’s value. An unsatisfactory 26 percent said they were very dissatisfied. Only 54 percent said they were happy with BigPond’s customer support and 68 percent were happy with reliability. This combined with the 50 percent recommendation factor from so many people means that we can only warn people away from BigPond as an ISP.

BigPond’s scores are so bad that it picks up the wooden spoon for the entire survey and, based on our results, we feel justified in saying Australia’s biggest tech company is also the worst. However, it is not alone in poor feedback.

Dodo Internet was poor across the board, with only 35 percent of users satisfied with support, 55 percent satisfied with reliability and only 50 percent willing to recommend the ISP to a friend. Keep away.

There is good news. Westnet scored top marks for customer support, with an amazing 95 percent of customers saying they were satisfied or very satisfied. An impressive 93 percent said likewise about reliability and 90 percent of its customers said they’d recommend the ISP to a friend. The only mark against it was that only 66 percent said they were happy with the value for money.

However, it is well deserving of a Highly Commended award.

But there was a clear winner: 89 percent of customers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with Internode’s support and 88 percent felt positive regarding its value. But what won Internode this year’s ISP award was having 97 percent of its customers saying that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the ISP’s reliability and a similar proportion saying they’d recommend it to a friend.

That is winning form if ever we’ve seen it and we’re happy to declare Internode the Best ISP of 2006.

Bricks & Mortar Retailer

Winner: Jaycar

Not surprisingly the bricks and mortar retailer award drew a huge response: more than 9000 customer experiences were proffered. Everyone uses these shops and generally know what to expect when they go into them.

It’s notable that nobody did really badly here but Radio Rentals’ scores were distinctly average when compared to everybody else. Harvey Norman drew most votes with two-and-a-half thousand and was found to be generally good, although, not surprisingly, it wasn’t highly-regarded for its low prices. Retravision looked to be doing well but only 69 percent said they were satisfied or very satisfied with customer service. Harris Technology offered a slight improvement here but only 58 percent said they were happy with the value on offer.

The clear winner was Jaycar. Approximately 89 percent said they were satisfied or very satisfied with customer service and scores were not much lower for delivery reliability and value for money.

Online Retailer

Equal First Winners: PlusCorp • Secret • Mega PC
Highly Commended: PC Maniacs

Assessing online retailers is what actually started the ball rolling for the whole reliability and service awards. As you may be aware, PC Authority is the only magazine to quote real-world prices in its reviews as readers can’t assess value for money (properly) when referring to RRPs. Not surprisingly, when PC Authority made this switch a little over a year ago it ruffled many feathers in the industry. The common rallying cry was, “You can’t trust online retailers”. Or can you? Finally, PC Authority provides some answers.

More than 13,000 customer experiences were related in our results – 4000 more than from bricks and mortar stores. This is a sure sign that the online retailer market in Australia is more mature than many people give it credit for. However, Australia has a great many online shops and not all received the requisite 100 votes to register. That said, PC Authority still managed to provide ratings for 29 vendors.

What may surprise many is that when the online and bricks and mortar results are viewed together, Jaycar comes 15th out of 37. This doesn’t surprise us. We know that the best online stores must be good – they could not succeed in such a competitive market otherwise.

But are there any consumers should be wary of? GameDude came last, but how does it compare with a known benchmark like Harvey Norman? About 51 percent of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with GameDude’s online customer service compared to 57 percent of Harvey Norman customers (Harvey Norman rated slightly higher overall because a larger proportion were neither satisfied or dissatisfied).

About 65 percent of Harvey Norman customers were satisfied or very satisfied with deliveries while only 48 percent of GameDude customers were. However, only 44 percent of Harvey Norman customers were happy with the value on offer while 73 percent of GameDude customers were. This, and other results (like from MSY) suggest that there is some truth in the statement that famously-cheap online shops can struggle in terms of customer service.

PC Authority was well aware that many online stores helped promote this survey. However, all were under strict instructions not to offer incentives for positive voting and after extensive monitoring and scrutiny we were satisfied that no major skulduggery took place. Promotion seems to have paid off as all of the top stores drew very good feedback from their customers – validating their confidence in their customers’ experiences.

As such, the competition was incredibly tight and we simply couldn’t separate the top three: Pluscorp, Secret and Mega PC all rated excellent across the board with more than 90 percent of respondents saying they were satisfied or very satisfied in every area. PC Maniacs followed closely behind and win a Highly Commended award.

PC Authority will monitor the online shops closely over the next 12 months and we welcome your
feedback: www.pca.com.au. Hopefully the winner will be rewarded with a boost in sales, but they’ll be under even greater pressure to deliver now.

Notebooks

Winner: Asus
Highly Commended: Apple

Retailers say that notebooks are now outselling PCs 60:40 and the survey in part agrees with their point of view.

However, the desktop survey (not reported here; see PC Authority January 2007 issue 110) shows that many people build their own PC these days and that desktops are hardly a dying breed. So in a way it’s more important to know about the reliability and service of a notebook because people are unable to build one themselves and are at the mercy of a company they probably only know by brand, hearsay and reputation.

More than 5300 notebooks were bought by our 8000-plus readers and most of Australia’s major manufacturers received the minimum 100 votes required to compete. Results varied a fair bit.

In terms of reliability, Apple, Asus, Sony and Toshiba saw around 90 percent of customers satisfied or very satisfied with their notebook’s reliability (the latter two scored lower because they had slightly more dissatisfied customers). Dell, the only company to break 1000 responses, followed with 85 percent, along with IBM. HP and Compaq saw 81 percent positive response rates and Acer trailed with 77 percent.

An average of 74 percent of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with customer support. Apple was some way ahead of this mark with 84 percent; Asus followed closely behind with 83 percent. Dell, Sony, Lenovo and Toshiba rated in the 70s, Acer dropped to 69 percent and HP and Compaq dropped to 66 percent and 64 percent respectively.
In terms of complaints, an average of 5 percent of respondents said getting through to sales people was a problem. This dropped to 2 percent for Apple and Lenovo but rose to 7 percent for Compaq and Dell. A troubling 12 percent (average) of respondents claimed they had difficulties getting through to support personnel. This dropped to 7 percent for Asus, and 9 percent for Apple, Lenovo and Toshiba respondents. But it rose to 14 percent for Acer and Compaq and peaked at 16 percent for HP customers.

On average, 9 percent of respondents had trouble understanding the sales and/or support people but results varied widely across the manufacturers. Kudos to Apple: not a single respondent had difficulties here. Only 3 percent of Sony customers had these problems, 5 percent of Asus and Lenovo customers did as well and 6 percent of Toshiba customers did too.

More troubling was 13 percent of HP customers complaining and 17 percent of Dell customers doing likewise.

Telephone courtesy caused 6 percent of respondents to complain (on average), though Compaq was higher with 10 percent and HP worst again with 12 percent.

Repairs taking longer than promised was generally high at around 10 percent with Acer and HP rising to 14 percent. Dell was best with 7 percent.

Suppliers trying to wriggle out of warranties troubled 5 percent of respondents, though Dell and Lenovo saw only 3 percent complain here while a worrying 12 percent of Sony respondents complained.

But these problems didn’t always translate to customer satisfaction. This rating was measured using one-third of respondents’ “Value for money” satisfaction response and two-thirds of their “Would you buy from the same company again” rating. Not surprisingly 91 percent of Apple users said they would buy an Apple notebook again but Asus was not far behind with 90 percent. However, 88 percent of Dell users said they’d buy Dell again.