Reliability and Service Report Card

Desktops

There's nothing quite like a pleasant surprise. And this year, we're happy to report that things are looking up for desktop owners: According to our survey, PC reliability has improved and manufacturers are delivering better support than they did last year. For example, on average, participants in our survey reported fewer instances of component failure and of problems when they first switched on their machines. On the service front, the improvements in the desktop PCs category are not as pronounced. But even there, hold times have gotten slightly better, and fewer survey respondents said that their PC troubles remained unresolved.

Of course, some PC makers fared better than others. Dell, EMachines, and IBM stand out on most reliability measures, while HP and Compaq often lag their peers. We're treating HP and Compaq as separate brands despite HP's purchase of Compaq in May 2002: Since we received reports about PCs that are three years old or newer, more respondents' experiences were associated with the separate companies than with the merged one. (Today, though, HP is aiming to make the HP and Compaq support experiences indistinguishable.) Big Blue, EMachines, and independent retailers (also known as mom-and-pop shops or white-box makers) received impressive service marks, while Compaq, HP, Dell, and Sony trailed in a few support measures.

One of the most notable improvements relates to the percentage of PCs with problems: 46 percent of respondents reported at least one major problem, down from 53 percent last December (Click here for the full story of last year's results). Every company listed in our chart showed progress here--but none more dramatically than EMachines, which captured top marks on this measure.

EMachines Steals the Show

Talk about a turnaround: In previous surveys, asking EMachines owners about their PCs' reliability usually elicited tales of woe from respondents. In our latest report, its overall rating is Good. In fact, the company grabs the number one spot on several reliability and service measures. For instance, EMachines respondents experienced the lowest percentage of problems when they first turned on their PCs--just over 2 percent (our survey average was almost 5 percent). On the service side, 77 percent of EMachines customers reported their service issues being resolved within five days--a sharp uptick from its score of 58 percent the last time around. (Note: In this story, all results for EMachines relate to its desktop PCs. The company began selling notebooks again at around the time our survey was fielded.)

What has changed at EMachines? Greg Memo, the company's executive vice president, reports that in the past year it introduced a new chassis design that enables users to replace parts themselves more easily. EMachines also beefed up its Web-based support, by adding new content to answer customers' questions. The company has introduced interactive chat capabilities with technical support reps, too.

Like Andrea Jaffrey, Glen Ashman has had a generally positive experience with his EMachines computer. Ashman, an attorney based in Atlanta, owns PCs from several different companies, including ones from Compaq and HP. "This is probably the most trouble-free PC I've owned," says Ashman of his EMachines Etower 500is. The downside to his story? He can't say similarly complimentary things about his non-EMachines computers.

HP and Compaq Woes

Ashman's HP Pavilion 512c has suffered from an ongoing graphics problem for more than six months. The display locks up, Ashman has to reboot his PC, and then he encounters XP "fatal error" messages after he reboots. The problem is sporadic; it goes away for a few days but then shows up twice in one day. "I think everyone [in tech support] knows that there's a driver problem, but no one knows what it is," says Ashman. For now, he's living with the problem. His family's Compaq Presario 5000 US required a motherboard replacement under warranty within the last year, and the machine ended up in a local CompUSA, where it sat for more than a week before finally getting fixed.

Like Ashman, other HP and Compaq owners have had their share of problems. The HP and Compaq brands rank in the cellar for users' overall satisfaction with product reliability. Some HP and Compaq customers also reported being disappointed at shortcomings in the knowledge and sincere effort of technicians.

HP acknowledges a difficult transition period following the HP-Compaq merger, but customers will soon see changes, it says. "During the first 12 months [after the merger], we were trying to consolidate and eliminate redundancies," says Chris Shea, HP's vice president of consumer services and support. "Now we're putting probably 80 percent of the effort into improving the customer experience and 20 percent of the effort into efficiency." Previously, the reverse was true, Shea says.

The company recently combined the internal systems it uses when HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario customers call, but it will keep product specialists on staff. Soon, more Pavilion users will be able to request parts they can replace themselves instead of having to ship their PCs to HP or visit an authorized repair center. The company also introduced a pilot program to solve Internet connection problems faster, using three-way phone calls between HP, customers, and several large ISPs.

Given the age of the systems included in our survey, we wanted to find out whether the scores from HP's newer machines were better. So we isolated our data relating to PCs that were one year old or younger. In general, HP's and Compaq's numbers did improve for one-year-old PCs, but so did most of the scores for the other manufacturers with PCs of this age, both for desktops and notebook PCs. (A few measures for a handful of manufacturers were actually lower.) Why? By their nature, younger PCs should be more reliable anyway--and Windows XP machines are easier to service than Windows Me systems.

Despite HP's new initiatives, the company faces a huge service task, analysts believe. Even before the merger, HP and Compaq offered a wider range of different models across their product lines than competing brands did. "I think it would be helpful for the company to focus more energy on fewer products," says Roger Kay, vice president of client computing at market research firm IDC. He advises culling more models from HP's product lines.

More Service Snags

HP and Compaq aren't the only companies with iffy service scores. Dell, Gateway, and Sony received ratings of Fair for service. Dell and Sony (and Compaq) markedly trail their competitors on hold times. Just 45 percent of Sony customers and 48 percent of Dell customers reported waiting on hold for 5 minutes or less. Independent retailers easily top the class on this measure: Over 86 percent of their customers said they waited on hold for 5 minutes or less.

The Dell phone experience leaves some longtime fans steaming. "It's ridiculous," says Steve Heck, a technology manager for an industrial firm in Blairsville, Pennsylvania. Heck owns a Dell desktop and two Dell laptop PCs. "I try to avoid calling [Dell] at all, because the automated telephone system is so bad," he says. Heck reports that a customer can spend hours trying to get to the right person.

Todd Penner, Dell's director of technical support for U.S. consumer business, says that the company's own data indicates that hold times have improved this year. But he pointed to general trends that have affected hold times. Widespread viruses bring a deluge of calls at one time. Plus, people hold onto their PCs longer and buy new peripherals, prompting more calls. Dell continues to add call center reps and to refine training. Penner declines to specify how many reps it has added, however, or how many of them work offshore in locales like India. Though offshore techs got their share of complaints in our survey, Dell plans to keep using them. In particular, some respondents said that they had a hard time understanding techs with heavy accents.

One tip for frustrated Dell devotees: Dell recently standardized the process for routing callers to upper-level technicians. If you're getting nowhere with your first tech rep, ask immediately to speak with an "escalation expert," who will schedule a time for a follow-up call with a higher-level rep.

Despite the changes that companies like Dell are making, users shouldn't expect to see a turnaround in hold times anytime soon, says IDC's Kay. PC makers don't want to relinquish any more of their slim profit margin to pay for support costs.

See our survey results for desktop PCs.