Customers Rate PC Vendors' Tech Support

VorfeedTech writes "News.com has a story on consumers' satisfaction with tech support. The article goes on to mention ConsumerReports' survey results comparing a few of the major PC vendors. Apple rated the best for tech support. I guess this is where they think different (TM)."

Comments

Re:Apple, Gateway

[Outland Traveller]

250$ for the extra 2 years of no-questions-asked tech support is exactly what you want if you're a college student. Do you really think your laptop is going to make it through college in one piece?

As a comparison, try checking the prices of in-store maintenance contracts for the same hardware. You'll find Apple is more than reasonable.

On the flip side, consider that any hardware repair at all after the first year will run you at least 350$ for parts and labor. You're foolish not the get the applecare warranty.

Remember that apple systems have a longer lifetime than typical PC counterparts. You're going to be using that ibook for a long time to come, you might as well take care of it.

Slashdot readers opinion not representative

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

I don't think we slashdot readers can say much about the quality of customer service for a simple reason: the average slashdot reader probably has a larger understanding of computers than the average customer service employee.
Point in case: I mailed compaq a few weeks ago, after I installed SuSE 8.0, because my computer was freezing, and the caps and scroll lock lights were blinking when this happened. I hoped the people at compaq could tell me if this was a diagnostic code.
The support was pretty good; I got a response to my email in less than 15 minutes. I find that excellent. However, the poor guy at the support centre couldn't get a grip on what I was saying, because he consequently underestimated my knowledge of computers. His first response was to make me use the quick restore cd's, which would erase my hard disk and repartition it and reinstall the win98 se that originally came with the computer.
My point is that if you're a professional yourself, your either better than the support guy or the support guy is not going to take you serious enough. Either way you won't be helped properly. That's why slashdot readers can't really have a representative opinion on help desks; help desks are aimed at nitwits (as far as their computer use goes anyhow).

Re:How accurate is this thing?

[Draoi]

[..] comparing an Apple customer's perception of Apple support with a Dell customer's perception of Dell support is hardly an accurate picture - the Dell customer has no particular love for the company.

Ask yourself the question, why not??

Re:How accurate is this thing?

[Matthias Wiesmann]

This seems ridiculously high to me. 5% of computers are unusable in the first month? No explanation is give of what constitutes "unusable". Does it mean the hard drive is physically crapped out or something like "the Internet is broken again"?

When we bought a bunch of PCs to build a cluster here in the lab, one out of 16 did not work (I think it was the motherboard, I can't remember), while 16 is not exactly a good sampling, the failure rate was above 5%. Between hardware duds, shippement errors, installation errors and configuration problems, 5% seems quite resonable to me. While the average /. guy could probably solve those problems, the average user cannot. Also note, that "the internet is not working" is a good definition of unusable if you bought the computer to go on the internet. When rating customer satisfaction having an objective reference makes little sense.

Furthermore, Apple is a terrible company to include in this kind of survey. A very large percentage of their customers are Mac enthusiasts. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that comparing an Apple customer's perception of Apple support with a Dell customer's perception of Dell support is hardly an accurate picture - the Dell customer has no particular love for the company.

Huh? Because Apple customers like Apple products they should be excluded of a customer satisfaction survey?

You argue that because they are Mac enthousiast they will have a better perception of Apple's tech support. Has it occured to you that maybe Mac enthousiast are enthousiastic because of the quality of Apple's tech support and that the probable reason that the Dell customer has no particular love for the company is because their products are not very satisfying...

Tech Support

[Quill_28]

You know why tech support sucks?

Because people will not pay for it. Margins are too low for companies to give good tech support. Consumers are only looking at prices/features not how good their tech support is. Who here is going to pay an extra $100 to $200 a year just for good tech support? Not many. Businesses are different, but most consumers are not going to pay the money to get good tech support.

Re:Good ones...

[Dolly_Llama]

I make it habit to compliment good service wherever I receive it. When you find a person who is actually nice and personable, make sure to take their name down. Then write a letter to their supervisor. Not many people actually do this, so a single letter mentioning superior performance can make a difference on their next review.

This isn't just for phone service. For instance, I just replaced my battery at Sears (at Vallco in Cupertino). A guy named Frank provided superior service and proved himself an all around decent human being. I wrote a letter to the manager and would recommend anyone to him and to that Sears.