PCA survey: Telstra Australia's worst tech company

Haymarket Media’s PC Authority magazine finally announced the results of its mammoth Reliability and Service survey. The comprehensive survey ran for three months, covered 142 product lines and saw eighty-five and a half thousand opinions given to tech products and services available in Australia.

‘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 over 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. However, the real killer came with the question, ‘Would you recommend this ISP to a friend?’. Here, one out of every two customers (50 percent) said they wouldn’t.

‘To put this in perspective’ continued Ross, ‘97 percent of Internode customers said they would recommend their ISP’. 97 percent also were satisfied or very satisfied with Internode’s reliability and, not surprisingly, it won the Best ISP award. But it gets worse for Telstra. Out of every product and service in the entire survey, nobody else’s scores were worse. Ross concluded, ‘Our survey is very clear: Australia’s biggest tech company is also its worst’.

Other shocking results came in the Online Shop category. Ross said, ‘The general consensus in Australia has always been that you simply can’t trust online shops. Our survey paints a different picture’. Indeed, if you combine the ratings of the online shops with those of regular ‘bricks & mortar’ stores (like Harvey Norman), the winning ‘brick’s & 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+ of customers satisfied or very satisfied with customer service, delivery accuracy and value for money. Ross concluded, ‘It shows online stores in Australia are far more mature than many people give them credit for’. However, he warned, ‘But don’t take this as a blanket recommendation, there’s a lot of these shops operating and they’re not all good’. Further details are available in the new issue.

The PC Authority team also presented editorial awards to products and services which it felt had done particularly well in 2006. The most prestigious of which was the Most Wanted Hardware award which went to the product that the team wanted to spend their own money on. The winner was Dell with its 24-inch LCD monitor, the 2407WFP. Ross said, ‘This monitor is amazing. Once you’ve used a 24-inch LCD you won’t want to ever go back. The Dell’s performance is outstanding, it’s packed with features and it’s seriously good value at just over $1000’.

Another notable winner was Apple who revolutionised Macintosh computers with its BootCamp software which let people run Microsoft’s Windows on them. Another notable winner was Intel whose Core 2 processor blew the socks of the competition.

Awards were presented to the various winners at a ceremony at Walsh Bay on Thursday.

The Reliability and Service award winners were:-

PC award - Dell
Notebook award - Asus
LCD Monitor award - Samsung
Digital Camera award - Canon
Inkjet printer award - Canon
Laser printer award - Canon
Wireless router award - Billion
Motherboard award - DFI
Graphics Card award - HIS
Hard Disk award - Seagate
PDA/Smartphone award - Palm
Best ISP - Internode
Best Bricks & Mortar Retailer - Jaycar
Best Online Retailer - PlusCorp, Secret, MegaPC

The Editorial award winners were:-

Most Wanted Hardware award - Dell 2407WFP 24-inch LCD monitor
Most Wanted Software award - Apple BootCamp
Best Web Application award - YouTube
Technology Innovator award - Intel
Game Of The Year - Oblivion
Labs Award: PCs & Notebooks - Dell
Labs Award: Peripherals & Components Samsung
A-List Award - Dell

A breakdown and analysis of results is available in the December issue of CRN. A full breakdown will be available from the December PC Authority magazine, on sale next week.