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Problems, Problems

The best way to fix PC problems is to avoid them in the first place. But according to our study, that's not always easy to do: 48 percent of all respondents for our 13 home PC companies reported problems. The best of the bunch, though, was Dell--just 35 percent of Dell owners reported having a problem. Moreover, not a single Dell user told us their home PC was dead on arrival.

So what kept Dell out of the top tier? Inconsistent support--historically, Dell's strong suit. Readers reported long waits on hold and a relatively high percentage of unresolved problems. Nearly 10 percent of Dell customers who got service walked away without a solution (the average for home PC vendors was 8 percent). And respondents rated Dell's support staff only Fair for knowledge and effort.

In fact, earlier this year PC World received an unusually high volume of complaints about Dell from readers. They told of difficulties getting through to tech support and of problems falling through the cracks. Dell acknowledged that there were problems as a result of heavy sales over the holiday season and early in the year. Since then, the company has beefed up its tech support and expanded its e-mail support team. At the time of these improvements, the complaints began to decline (see PCW Advocate, July).

The most pleasantly surprising feedback came from CyberMax and Sony home PC users. (For a closer look at CyberMax, see " Vendor Spotlight: CyberMax Unveiled.") Both are relative newcomers to the PC game, but they held their own against more established companies, copping top grades. In fact, in some key service measures, CyberMax and Sony rated Outstanding. For instance, only 4 percent of CyberMax users said their most recent problem was never resolved, and a full 80 percent of Sony users told us they got a resolution to their problem in five days or less.

"When I purchased my Sony PC in May of 1997, I was ecstatic. The support was great--and patient," says Wayne Marks of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, who uses his Sony PCV-90 system for culinary research, managing his bank accounts, and communicating with his son at Penn State University. "I always got a solution to my problem. One time, they even guided me through a BIOS update--no trivial task for a beginner," adds Marks.

How did Sony get a handle on tech support so quickly? By bringing together users with the technicians who can solve their problems, says Maureen Read, director of Sony's Technical Response Center in Fort Myers, Florida. Read says Sony is quick to move a problem up the ladder if the technician who answers the phone can't solve it. "At this point," she says, "specialists can focus on tougher problems and utilize special diagnostics, such as software that allows our technicians to access the customer's PC remotely, to better evaluate the problem."

Quick resolutions aren't Sony's only strength. Sony owners reported short hold times and gave good grades to the company's technicians for their knowledge and sincere effort in solving problems.

But the honeymoon may be short-lived. Due to a high volume of support calls, Sony started to enforce its one-year limit on free technical support in June. It now charges $19.95 per incident after the first year. This change has angered many Sony customers, including Marks, who were under the impression that phone support would be free of charge for the life of their machine.

Sony spokesperson Jim Adamson says the consumer electronics giant didn't formally enforce its one-year free-support policy for the first two years that its VAIO desktop computers were on the market. "But then a big increase in call volume made it economically unfeasible to continue" indefinite free support, he says. "To the best of our knowledge, Sony never stated in print that we would offer free lifetime technical support."

Regardless of what led to the service charge, the change could hurt Sony's scores in future surveys, if history is any guide. When Compaq started to charge customers $35 for certain types of support in 1996, the company's service scores slid dramatically (see "PC Reliability and Service: Good-Bye to Good Support?" December 1996). Compaq has since stopped charging for support.