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JD Powers doesn't list Tesla for either luxury cars or luxury SUVs.

JD Powers doesn't list Tesla for either luxury cars or luxury SUVs.

Not gonna happen. The big ISPs are going to do what they've always done: increase their revenues by innovation, new infrastructure, and services that people want to buy. Improving their service and customer experience.

Comcast is the best at customer service! Check this out.

http://www.jdpower.com/press-r...

Honda has had 15 engines on the Ward's 10 best engines lists over the years. GM has had 29.
Sure, GM's had a few lemons in their time, but so have all the Japanese ones. The Civic del Sol got a "Not Recommended" rating from Consumer Reports, due to "the worst body integrity" in the industry, or something like that. (Been a long time since I read that review, and I don't remember the exact wording.)

J.D. Power's Vehicle Dependability Study for 2013 vehicles, based on complaints for vehicles between 2-3 years old, included at least 3 GM products listed on the "most reliable" side: Buick Encore, Chevy Silverado HD, and Camaro.
Incidentally, GMC, Chevrolet, and Buick all receive better Problems/100 vehicles scores than Honda, Acura, and Infiniti. Buick's score is even better than Toyota's.
http://canada.jdpower.com/pres...

Similarly, J.D. Power's 10 most reliable vehicles for 2016 includes four GM products: Buick Verano and LaCrosse, and the Chevy Malibu and Camaro.
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-...

Another where GM has as many or more cars on the most reliable list as any other manufacturer:
http://www.jdpower.com/cars/ar...

It's funny, because I hear people complain about GM reliability all the time, and they're usually either referring to some neighbour who has an entry level Cobalt (sample of 1) or stuff from 20-30 years ago. These same people who decry old GM reliability would sometimes praise Hyundai reliability, while completely and totally failing to remember the debacle that was the Pony and Excel. Every single one of them burned oil badly after 2-3 years, and virtually all of them had rust perforation holes within 6 years. 80s GM cars, while slow due to overly ambitious emissions regulations for the time (just like most other manufacturers in the world, though, with the strange exception of the Buick turbos) were paragons of reliability compared to Hyundai at the time.

Honda has had 15 engines on the Ward's 10 best engines lists over the years. GM has had 29.
Sure, GM's had a few lemons in their time, but so have all the Japanese ones. The Civic del Sol got a "Not Recommended" rating from Consumer Reports, due to "the worst body integrity" in the industry, or something like that. (Been a long time since I read that review, and I don't remember the exact wording.)

J.D. Power's Vehicle Dependability Study for 2013 vehicles, based on complaints for vehicles between 2-3 years old, included at least 3 GM products listed on the "most reliable" side: Buick Encore, Chevy Silverado HD, and Camaro.
Incidentally, GMC, Chevrolet, and Buick all receive better Problems/100 vehicles scores than Honda, Acura, and Infiniti. Buick's score is even better than Toyota's.
http://canada.jdpower.com/pres...

Similarly, J.D. Power's 10 most reliable vehicles for 2016 includes four GM products: Buick Verano and LaCrosse, and the Chevy Malibu and Camaro.
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-...

Another where GM has as many or more cars on the most reliable list as any other manufacturer:
http://www.jdpower.com/cars/ar...

It's funny, because I hear people complain about GM reliability all the time, and they're usually either referring to some neighbour who has an entry level Cobalt (sample of 1) or stuff from 20-30 years ago. These same people who decry old GM reliability would sometimes praise Hyundai reliability, while completely and totally failing to remember the debacle that was the Pony and Excel. Every single one of them burned oil badly after 2-3 years, and virtually all of them had rust perforation holes within 6 years. 80s GM cars, while slow due to overly ambitious emissions regulations for the time (just like most other manufacturers in the world, though, with the strange exception of the Buick turbos) were paragons of reliability compared to Hyundai at the time.

And here's my source: http://www.jdpower.com/press-r...

This may interest you:
http://www.jdpower.com/sites/d...

(PDF warning)

Oddly, I've nary a problem with my BMWs over the years - nothing major, at any rate. On the other hand, I keep them properly maintained. Yes, yes it is expensive but it seems to be worth it.

You must not have been looking at the same quality surveys then.. 6 out of the top 10 car models in this satisfaction survey from last year are VW or one of its brands (Skoda):

You right I wasn't. I was looking at ones that measure RELIABILITY like this which have VW firmly in the bottom half. Same deal with Consumer Reports and plenty of others. The survey you cited measures customer satisfaction, not reliability. Very different. (Plus how do you get 6 of the top 10 and still not manage to be the top brand?)

VW make better cars than American companies.

Umm, JD Powers disagrees:
http://www.jdpower.com/press-r...

Anecdotally, everyone I know with VWs have had plenty of annoying problems. Ford & GM, not so many. I am surprised that VW comes in even worse than Chrysler, though.

My theory is that a lot of European manufacturers just don't fully understand just how much Americans drive. In addition to having almost twice as many vehicles per capita than the EU (any statistics that say otherwise are probably excluding light trucks in the US numbers), each of those vehicles gets driven almost twice as many miles in a year. Basically, American drive 3-4 times as much as Europeans.

My other theory is that the fact that their home markets are protected from the Japanese manufacturers has allowed them to rest on their laurels a bit. US manufacturers suffered vs the quality of the Japanese cars for years, but they eventually upped their game.

Maybe in Germany. In the US, they are below industry average for dependability and are always one of the lowest rated brands for quality studies.

http://www.jdpower.com/press-r...

Maybe the engines will run a long time but the owners will spend a lot more money keeping everything else working.

Why link to an article and not to the report?

http://www.jdpower.com/press-r...

Weird, I don't see Hyundai on either of these lists.

http://www.consumerreports.org...
http://autos.jdpower.com/conte...

You could try reading the details.

Sprint and T-Mobile have bad service, there merge will be a composite of horrible service that makes everyone else glad they aren't using Sprint-Mobile.

Or here's another place explaining an older JD poll

That almost sounds convincing, but actual analysis disagrees.

I see your story and raise you a survey. And another, from closer to the same time period as your story.

And then some a little bit more up to date.

I see your story and raise you a survey. And another, from closer to the same time period as your story.

And then some a little bit more up to date.

I see your story and raise you a survey. And another, from closer to the same time period as your story.

And then some a little bit more up to date.

I think they haven't fallen, but they definitely stumbled. Whatever the cause, the perception seems to be that they have fallen quite a bit.
J. D. Power has them below Lexus (??? same company), Acura, Mazda, Mercedes, Honda, and Porsche. In fact, they are right there with Kia. Now, Kia has improved tremendously, but I'd aspire for better :)

You pulled that opinion out of your ass. Apple's products are well built. Apple consistently outdoes the rest of the tech industry on consumer satisfaction ratings.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/20/apple-customer-satisfaction-rating-at-all-time-high-dominates-pc-industry/
http://www.changewaveresearch.com/articles/2011/smart_phones_20110718.html
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Apple-iPad-Continues-to-Dominate-Consumer-Reports-Ratings-787644/
http://www.jdpower.com/news/pressrelease.aspx?ID=2011030

And that is only one aspect of design. Apple selling Windows PCs or Android Phones wouldn't be nearly as popular. The software and ecosystem design is even more important than the industrial design.

GP is right, Android is like cheap toilet paper. If you really care about saving money and trees then it's great, but for most of us the whole sandpaper effect just doesn't cut it.

I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't read Slashdot that did regret getting an Android phone. It seems like the stats bear that out.

And that would match with J.D. Power's customer satsfaction reports for 2011:

        http://www.jdpower.com/travel/ratings/airline-ratings/traditional/

Although, when you compare the "Low Cost" airlines, there's a few others that had similar bad ratings:

        http://www.jdpower.com/travel/ratings/airline-ratings/low-cost/

And that would match with J.D. Power's customer satsfaction reports for 2011:

        http://www.jdpower.com/travel/ratings/airline-ratings/traditional/

Although, when you compare the "Low Cost" airlines, there's a few others that had similar bad ratings:

        http://www.jdpower.com/travel/ratings/airline-ratings/low-cost/

Heh. I live in Texas, one of the few "deregulated" electricity markets in the US.

Our local power lines are owned and maintained by regulated monopolies which set prices per area for monthly maintenance fees.

Power companies then contract with the local infrastructure owner to provide power to the grid. And as a homeowner, I choose which power company I give money to; I pay them for how much electricity I use from the grid, and they generate the electricity. I also pay the maintenance fee passed from the local owner through my power company.

When I chose a power company, I was able to look up JD Power reviews and pick the best company. I had a choice.

How many people can say that?

Exhibit A is this whole conversation. Apple has been able to spin the fact that its products are inferior (they don't play flash) into some kind of asset. FYI iPhone users really do want to watch video on their devices, just like they do on a regular computer. That the iPhone can't is a design flaw and a weakness of the phone. It's explicitly forcing users to conform to technology.

Why is it so many refuse to believe that people could want something without flash? Why is that so far outside your world view? You know youtube gets me video on my iPhone just fine. I have no problems syncing video from iTunes. You're absolutely right. Me and millions of people want to watch video on our iPhones. And we do it all the time without flash. The design flaw is that Adobe can't make flash not suck.

This is the free market at work. No one made anyone buy iPhones. People bought them of their own free will. Even though we knew from the start what it could and couldn't do. Why? Because they don't suck. Did you see that JD Powers survey where iPhone satisfaction was so high that the average for all smartphones was higher than the next company? Form and function matter a lot. Any company that can nail the two will own the market. Apple hit it out of the park with the iPod, then the iPhone and here comes the iPad.

Call it kool-aid, fan-boyism, reality distortion, whatever. The truth is people are buying these things just about as fast as Apple can make them and they seem to be pretty damn happy with them. It's up to the competition to stop sucking.

I don't care if there's a company that's going to release the "iPad killer" that has a spec sheet a mile longer than the iPad. If it sucks to use, I won't buy it. The market is voting and it's not voting with you.

I find the whole argument that Apple is forcing people to adapt to them ridiculous. Wake up and smell the reality. The tech industry has been forcing people to adapt to crap for decades. All Apple has really done is shown the world just how much nicer technology can be to interact with.

The Audi 5000S was never defective...

That's right it wasn't. It was people blaming the equipment for their own failures.

As for the Toyota Camry, is it defective? The probability of it being defective is higher than the probability of the Audi 5000S being defective.

Umm, please show your calculations. You already admitted that the Audi 5000S was not defective so this should be interesting.

Consumer-safety standards in Japan are lower than the standards in the European Union.

Even if true (and you've provided no evidence that it is true) that has precisely nothing to do with a car sold in the United States where US consumer safety standards apply. Never mind that the Toytoa Camry is produced right here in the US (also in Japan, Russia, China and Australia).

Even from an engineering perspective, the Toyota Camry is a dangerous design. For example, the transmission is mechanically separated from the automatic-transmission lever (that the driver uses to change gears). The lever is connected to an electronic box that sends some electrical signals -- along copper wires -- to the tranmission to control it: the process is drive-by-wire.

Drive by wire does not make it a more dangerous design. It has DIFFERENT failure modes but different is not the same as dangerous. Fly by wire has become state of the art in airplanes where they have much stricter reliability standards so the technology clearly CAN be safe. While it is certainly possible Toyota has a defective system, I want to see some actual evidence of a fault beyond a few anecdotes of customers.

Do not trust the fault tolerance in mass-merchandise products

You do that every day whether you are aware of it or not. There is a reason we have product safety and liability laws. You trust your life to mass merchandise products every single day of your life.

If you own a Toyota Camry, I suggest that you sell it as quickly as possible and get an old-fashioned-technology vehicle without the drive-by-wire.

Good luck with that. Lots of cars are already drive by wire and within a few years nearly all will be. Enjoy driving unsafe older cars.

Fault tolerance is expensive and is meant to be expensive.

Actually it doesn't have to be expensive at all. A pipe wrench is a great example highly fault tolerant engineering but it isn't expensive. Fault tolerance CAN be expensive but it doesn't have to be. With an appropriate design it can even be cheaper.

The fact that only a handful of people have been affected by the freak accelerations matches a distribution of a low-probability electrical glitch.

It also matches the distribution of a handful of people standing on their accelerator pedal and being too embarrassed to admit they weren't using the brake. Remember the Audi? It's entirely reasonable to believe this is people trying to get money via our legal system instead of an actual engineering fault.

The Ford Fusion exceeds the quality of the Toyota Camry, does not use drive-by-wire, and costs much less than the Toyota deathtrap. Think about it.

The Ford Fusion DOES use drive by wire. Every hybrid car is drive by wire and soon enough so will (nearly) every non hybrid. Drive by Wire has FAR too many advantages in both cost and features to not be used.

Regarding quality, JD Power thinks you are full of crap and I tend to believe them more than you. 2010 Ford Fusion vs 2010 Toyota Camry

The Audi 5000S was never defective...

That's right it wasn't. It was people blaming the equipment for their own failures.

As for the Toyota Camry, is it defective? The probability of it being defective is higher than the probability of the Audi 5000S being defective.

Umm, please show your calculations. You already admitted that the Audi 5000S was not defective so this should be interesting.

Consumer-safety standards in Japan are lower than the standards in the European Union.

Even if true (and you've provided no evidence that it is true) that has precisely nothing to do with a car sold in the United States where US consumer safety standards apply. Never mind that the Toytoa Camry is produced right here in the US (also in Japan, Russia, China and Australia).

Even from an engineering perspective, the Toyota Camry is a dangerous design. For example, the transmission is mechanically separated from the automatic-transmission lever (that the driver uses to change gears). The lever is connected to an electronic box that sends some electrical signals -- along copper wires -- to the tranmission to control it: the process is drive-by-wire.

Drive by wire does not make it a more dangerous design. It has DIFFERENT failure modes but different is not the same as dangerous. Fly by wire has become state of the art in airplanes where they have much stricter reliability standards so the technology clearly CAN be safe. While it is certainly possible Toyota has a defective system, I want to see some actual evidence of a fault beyond a few anecdotes of customers.

Do not trust the fault tolerance in mass-merchandise products

You do that every day whether you are aware of it or not. There is a reason we have product safety and liability laws. You trust your life to mass merchandise products every single day of your life.

If you own a Toyota Camry, I suggest that you sell it as quickly as possible and get an old-fashioned-technology vehicle without the drive-by-wire.

Good luck with that. Lots of cars are already drive by wire and within a few years nearly all will be. Enjoy driving unsafe older cars.

Fault tolerance is expensive and is meant to be expensive.

Actually it doesn't have to be expensive at all. A pipe wrench is a great example highly fault tolerant engineering but it isn't expensive. Fault tolerance CAN be expensive but it doesn't have to be. With an appropriate design it can even be cheaper.

The fact that only a handful of people have been affected by the freak accelerations matches a distribution of a low-probability electrical glitch.

It also matches the distribution of a handful of people standing on their accelerator pedal and being too embarrassed to admit they weren't using the brake. Remember the Audi? It's entirely reasonable to believe this is people trying to get money via our legal system instead of an actual engineering fault.

The Ford Fusion exceeds the quality of the Toyota Camry, does not use drive-by-wire, and costs much less than the Toyota deathtrap. Think about it.

The Ford Fusion DOES use drive by wire. Every hybrid car is drive by wire and soon enough so will (nearly) every non hybrid. Drive by Wire has FAR too many advantages in both cost and features to not be used.

Regarding quality, JD Power thinks you are full of crap and I tend to believe them more than you. 2010 Ford Fusion vs 2010 Toyota Camry

Note that the scores in the chart for Lexus (at 120) and Toyota (at 159) differ by about 30% even though both brands are built by the same company and by the same process. In other words, if two brands have scores that differ by, at most 30%, then they should be considered equal in quality.

Hence, any brand with a score of 210.675 (= 159 / 120 * 159) matches the quality of the Toyota brand. In other words, both brands produced by Ford Motor Company now equal the Toyota brand in quality. Also, Chevrolet, the core brand produced by General Motors, continues to be inferior to the Toyota brand.

Best of all, the price of a Ford vehicle is less, by several thousand dollars, than the price of a Toyota vehicle. If you value your hard-earned money, then buy a Ford Fusion instead of a Toyota Camry.

Note that the scores in the chart for Lexus (at 120) and Toyota (at 159) differ by about 30% even though both brands are built by the same company and by the same process. In other words, if two brands have scores that differ by, at most 30%, then they should be considered equal in quality.

Hence, any brand with a score of 210.675 (= 159 / 120 * 159) matches the quality of the Toyota brand. In other words, both brands produced by Ford Motor Company now equal the Toyota brand in quality. Also, Chevrolet, the core brand produced by General Motors, continues to be inferior to the Toyota brand.

Best of all, the price of a Ford vehicle is less, by several thousand dollars, than the price of a Toyota vehicle. If you value your hard-earned money, then buy a Ford Fusion instead of a Toyota Camry.

If only there were some way to objectively judge these things.

Lexus is not just a car, it's a pile of shit made for pompous morons.

That happens to be highest ranked in terms of dependability.

Just out of curiosity, I found this 2008 J.D. Power survey regarding mobile service customer satisfaction in the UK: http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pressrelease.aspx?ID=2008046

While Tesco Mobile (?!) come in first for pay-as-you-go, and Virgin Mobile take honours for contracts, O2 are second in both categories while Orange are dead last and Vodafone is only middling.

It depends on what time period you are talking about. The first Japanese cars here were cheap, and it showed. Then their quality improved. Now that they are popular and they feel they have beaten the competition, they have gotten more relaxed towards quality...

And the current J.D. Powers survey shows Buick and Cadillac to be tied with Honda in reliability (Toyota has dropped to 8th place overall) and last I checked, those were still American cars.

Their cars are expensive, inefficient, underpowered, and poorly-made compared to the competition.

That's not entirely true, especially on the quality portion. Take a look at the JD Power 2007 Brand Quality Ratings. Surprisingly, Lincoln did better than BMW, and Ford and GM are in the middle of the pack.

Interestingly enough, the words you spat out in the above quote seem to be some sort of weird side effect of some proto-viral marketing that came about in the early 90s.

Unfortunately, the FAQ the vw.com used to have up regarding biodiesel and B5 is gone. Essentially it said, for the purposes of the engine and emissions warranty (IIRC), you may not use any more than 5% biodiesel from approved sources and that it must meet petroleum industry standards. Fuel where the source is unknown doesn't qualify.

VW reliability is far below average and many of their vehicles are the least reliable in their classes.

See http://www.autoblog.com/2006/11/10/domestic-models -gain-major-ground-in-consumer-reports/ and http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pre ssrelease.asp?ID=2006133 for example.

Typically dreadful? JD Power disagrees: http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pre ssrelease.asp?ID=2006058 Do you have any anecdotal evidence or sources to the contrary, or are you just making stuff up?

Now I have heard the excuse that customers of fine automobiles are simply more finicky, so the direct comparison is unfair. But look who's at #1 - Lexus.

http://www.jdpower.com/cc/auto/index.jsp

Betting on cultures? You indeed are mad. Certainly you don't speak poorly of the culture that used "slow" super computers, "poorly" educated engineers and drove their "unreliable" cars work and were the ones to actually create the means to make this possible.
No, I know you wouldn't. Since I believe this is a misconception on your part I present the following link http://www.jdpower.com/news/releases/pressrelease. asp?ID=2004037 for your review. That pesky *censored* culture full of fat people seem to pull off remarkable things. Ohhh... bother.
valder.

Actually in the JD Power Associates Quality Survey, American made cars largely outdid European cars in quality this year. Lately Europeans cars have tended to be absolute junk.

A truely bad analogy. Volkswagen (which Audi is part of) is not a reliable car manufacturer. According to the
JD Powers reliability survey, VW is only better than Suzuki, Daewoo & Kia, and way worse than everyone else. (I am an ex-Audi owner, enjoying the significantly more reliable Suburu that I replaced the Audi with)

Not that it matters, it's all about "branding", and VW sell to the same demographic as Apple, where it's all about being "cooler than the mid west republican bible belt" than "reliability".

As for Apple laptops; all Tier1 laptops are pretty good, but you want to get good service from the vendor _when_ it breaks. Dell & IBM can do this (you can pay a bit extra to get 3 year _on site_ service), whereas AppleCare costs more than what Dell charge and requires you to "return your laptop to shop and wait until they fix it", which is pretty bogus given what how much extra you pay for Apple hardware.

Of course, this doesn't matter to the zealots. And to think that if the situation was reversed and it was Apple having better warranty plans than Dell/HP/IBM, we'd never here the end of it from the objective Apple fanatics. ;-)

Complain!

Corporate types wait for a certain number of complaints before doing anything. If enough people complain (and promise to buy the Home Media Option if DirecTV make it available) then DirecTV will do something about it

Go here and tell them how disappointed you are and how you you want to buy this. Mention that you'll complain to J D Power Consumer Satisfaction Survey which should make them take notice; DirecTV really values their high customer satisfaction rating and use it as a selling point.

So is ATT going to continue to build their GSM 2G network which is still half-assed at best?

JD Powers reports ATTWS is the best wireless telco on RF coverage in the USA (Overall).

Check out who is rated best in your market. http://www.jdpower.com/telecom/jdpa_ratings/FindWi reless.jsp

Remember the fuel price drop of the 1980's?

The SUV's and the trucks that're quite popular (check out the JD Power's stats) aren't exactly frugal in their petrol expenditures, you know....

Do you want to twist statistics? GM's earnings were *down* this year compared to the last. Toyota is still growing. GM had net revenues of approx. $5 billion, Toyota $4.5 billion. Looking at the rate of growth in both companies, Toyota will surpass GM in net earnings by 2005. Easily.

What does this information actually mean? Absolutely nothing! Why? because both indicators are completely dependent upon the trade agreements and such between the US and other countries, as well as buyer trends and such.

All we managed to prove is that the large companies in the automotive business are rather resilient, and that with deep enough pockets, it's possible to ride out the storm.