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 customer

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