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Tom Chimner is an engineer at Eaton Corporation in Southfield, Michigan. He uses Dell PCs at work and at home, but admits he's had problems getting good service. "When my home PC's CD/DVD-ROM drive stopped working," Chimner explains, "I called tech support and waited on hold for 30 minutes." A technician read Dell's knowledge base and suggested installing an antivirus program (which his PC already had) and cleaning the drive's optical reader. Chimner followed the tech's suggestions, but the drive still failed to work. "At one point the rep told me to reformat my hard drive, which I didn't want to do," recalls Chimner.

After weeks of back and forth, Dell finally sent a tech to his house to install a new drive--that fixed the problem. "Getting a replacement may not have happened if I hadn't been persistent," he says.

Chimner is not the only customer at odds with a PC maker. Our most recent survey of 29,593 subscribers reveals growing frustration with computer service. Last year, PC World readers told us they were unhappy with technical support. This year's survey shows little--if any--improvement. Dell, for example, tumbled in service overall--especially in hold times. The other big news: Apple rated higher than any other computer maker.

Overall, just half the people reported hold times of 5 minutes or less; fewer people said their problems were resolved within five days; and in a new measure, only 53 percent said their problem was resolved the first time they called tech support.

Survey respondents also indicated that PC reliability may be slipping, which could prompt more calls to tech support. Customers of several companies, including Dell, Gateway, MicronPC, and the now-merged Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, gave their vendors lower reliability marks than in last year's results. The most notable worsening is in the percentage of PCs with a problem. For example, in our last survey, Dell received a Good overall score in the notebook category; this year it dropped to Fair. Meanwhile, 43 percent of MicronPC desktop users reported a problem in the past; this time it was 56 percent. Last year 40 percent of IBM notebook users reported a problem; this year 47 percent did.

What's going on? To find out, we visited call centers and interviewed support technicians from various companies. The quality of these centers affects customer satisfaction, but some factors are out of technicians' hands. Cutthroat competition and a sluggish economy have forced companies to watch what they spend. Though PC makers insist they're investing heavily in service and support, they may not be investing as much as they did in years past. "In a market driven by prices, it's not surprising that companies are getting low marks for service," says Rob Enderle, research fellow at Giga Information Group. "PC makers are under severe cost constraints. They may be spending on service, but they can't overspend."

Nearly every vendor we spoke to has shifted its support emphasis from short hold times to resolving problems on the first call. Companies have discovered that it costs more to field follow-up calls from customers than it does to take the time to solve their problems on the first try. Technicians like the change because they are not under as much pressure to push people off the phone. Getting problems solved on the first call also means fewer hassles for PC users. But callers may wait on hold a few more minutes before they get through.