Reliability and Service Awards 2006

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