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October 25, 2006

hardware

Apple is 201 reliable. No, we’re not sure what that means.

Posted Oct. 25, ’06, 9:52 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Hardware

rescuecom.jpgDespite random shutdowns, overheating, and mislabeled Bluetooth cables, Apple consistently ranks high on customer service and reliability. Just the other week, Consumer Reports lauded Apple as tops in those two categories, a position that they’ve held before.

Nationwide computer service and repair company Rescuecom has also released a survey that ranked reliability of computer brands, based on 20,000 calls to their 1-800 service line. They ranked Apple and Lenovo/IBM at the top of the list, with Gateway and the mysterious “Others” brand bringing up the rear:

The Report calculated the following “Reliability Scores” for each computer vendor based on the percentage difference between their overall U.S. market share and the percentage of calls into the RESCUECOM call center about the particular computer vendor. The higher the score, the less likely it was that calls about the specific computer vendor to the RESCUECOM call center were received (scores are in parentheses).

IBM/Lenovo (243)
Apple (201)
HP/Compaq (12)
Dell (4)
Gateway (-12)
Others (-16)

Reliability Scores are based on a comparison of RESCUECOM’s Q2 2006 call center data with computer vendor market share data for the U.S. from the last four years (data taken from Gartner second quarter U.S. computer vendor market share data from 2003 to 2006).

So…201 what? I’m assuming that it means that Macs are reliable, but this metric doesn’t really seem to mean anything. If you’re going to factor in marketshare, why not come up with, say percentage of shipped computers that have needed repair, as Consumer Reports does? And lumping the “Others” together at -16 is a little suspicious too. We couldn’t break out other major brands like Sony (who ranked second in Consumer Reports’s scores)?

I’m glad that Macs seem to be so reliable, I just wish it was formatted in such a way as to be more useful and intelligible. If you’re interested in hearing Rescuecom’s CEO babble on and say nothing useful about the report, well, this video’s for you.

[via Pogue’s Posts]


1 Comments

Erik said:

The only thing I can think of that would make sense in this scenario, is that they have their own scoring system.

They probably have a system where people are asked 50 questions, and people's answers are scored between -5 and +5.

It would seem that the likes of Dell got a lot of zeros, while IBM/Lenovo got lots of +5 scores.

It would be interesting to see how the questions were formulated, though.

October 25, 2006 1:13 PM

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