“PC giant Dell Computer recently got some bad news, when the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released its yearly ratings of PC maker customer satisfaction. Dell customers rated the company just a 74, down from its 79 rating a year ago, because of poor customer service (Dell’s products, meanwhile, were rated very highly). By comparison, the darling of the report, Apple Computer, rated 81, and once again took the top spot in the survey, though Apple’s insanely loyal customer base probably skews those numbers,” Paul Thurrott writes for WindowsITPro.
Full article here.
So, using “Thurrott Logic,” would it be safe to say that Dell’s complete lack of an “insanely loyal customer base” probably skewed those numbers, too? By the way, DellDailyNews, DellMinute, DellNN, DellSurfer, DellCentral, etc. domain names are all still available.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Thurrott: Microsoft’s ‘iPod killer’ just ‘ain’t going to happen’ – August 12, 2005
Apple.com remakes online ‘Switch’ section (and quotes Windows IT Pro’s Paul Thurrott) – August 08, 2005
Thurrott: Sony Network Walkman is abysmal, get ‘near perfect’ Apple iPod shuffle instead – July 27, 2005
Thurrott: Apple Macs offer a safer computing experience than Microsoft Windows PCs – July 20, 2005
Thurrott: ‘I don’t see how Microsoft will ever stem the flow of iPods coming out of Cupertino’ – July 15, 2005
Thurrott on spyware: ‘we should have paid more attention to those Apple Switcher ads after all’ – July 08, 2005
Windows tech writer Thurrott: ‘In many ways, Mac OS X Tiger is simply better than Windows’ – May 07, 2005
Thurrott: ‘Longhorn is in complete disarray and in danger of collapsing under its own weight’ – April 27, 2005
Thurrott: Longhorn ‘has the makings of a train wreck’ – April 26, 2005
Thurrott: Longhorn demos ‘unimpressive, fall short of graphical excellence found today in Mac OS X’ – April 26, 2005
Doesn’t loyalty result from customer satisfaction?
We may be loyal, and that might be due to the great computers and serviice, but we do let Apple know when we are pissed about something.
Oh, I get it. So, you have to be a luke-warm customer to give unbiased feedback. INSANELY LOYAL is the point, you moron. High levels of customer satisfaction will garner loyalty. Even higher levels might garner insane loyalty. I don’t think it works the other way around — insanely loyal customers generating a higher than reasonable customer satisfaction rating.
Thurrott — another village idiot.
Interesting to hear that satisfied customers can “skew” a customer satisfaction rating. I wonder what rational people think when they read that kind of stuff.
The survey on customer satisfaction is probably skewed because Apple customers are “insanely loyal” about the product??? WTF?
Please don’t click on the link to the article. Thank you.
Why is this guy always have hard time believing anything positive about Apple?
“By the way, DellDailyNews, DellMinute, DellNN, DellSurfer, DellCentral, etc. domain names are all still available.”
That’s hysterical.
Anyway, this is just some sour grapes, and if Thurott took the time to read the Apple chat boards, he would see the Apple community is very demanding and critical of Apple. They are loyal–and give Apple high stats–because they deliver. No call centers across the world with people you can’t understand.
What an Oxy-Moron!
-To infinty and beyond
Maybe now he can see why absolutely NOBODY is insanely loyal to Dell. That would certainly explain their recent drop in customer satisfaction. You actually have to sell great products in order to get a great customer service rating and inspire loyalty in the first place. And that is something Dell has obviously never done with their Wal-Mart junkware.
“if Thurott took the time to read the Apple chat boards, he would see the Apple community is very demanding and critical of Apple.”
Oh believe me, Turdrott reads this Apple chat board religiously for sure. He loves the attention that he gets on here for the drivel he writes. Why do you think he alternates between bashing and praising Apple on a near daily basis? It’s just to see how much attention he can generate for himself and his pitiful website (that likely doesn’t get 1/10th the number of hits that MDN does). He’s nothing more than a troll, plain and simple.
One has to be insane to be loyal to the likes of Dell and Microsoft – hardware & software examples of slipshod quality. People still mindlessly follow these two companies even after being clobbered by yet another virus attack.
Alec – well put. ROFL – such great comments on this article!
I love the potential headline:
“Satisfied customers skew customer satisfaction survey!”
Still laughing…
So what if the customer base is loyal? Doesn’t disqualify the results. No matter what Apple did to earn the high marks, they earned them. Apple should be pround of the “insanely loyal” customer base.
MDN: doubt
Thurrott: Apple’s customer satisfaction rating ‘probably skewed by insanely loyal customer base’
Apple Fans: Thurott’s brain rating is ‘proably skewed by the fact that he is a son of a retarded chimp whore’
good to see Paul is back at it again!
Typical liberal view of I’m misable so misery should be spread around equally. Or, the Apple insanely loyal are right-wing kooks!
The ONLY reason Mac users are so satisfied, is that they are so satisfied!
Who would want to be part of that? Better use Windows and be pissed at your computer all the time.
I wonder why Apple has an “insanely loyal customer base” and Dell doesn’t
I think any rational person reading these posts would realize that yes, Apple does have an insanely loyal customer base. Some are pretty honest about their criticisms, but many are willing to twist their perceptions in order to agree with whatever Apple says. The fact that many are so quick to defend Apple against any type of attack, real or imaginary, just shows how insanely loyal some of them are. Face it, a company or product that affects roughly 2% of your life does not deserve the worship that some of you give to it.
??? SO let me get this straight, the only reason the results of happy customers is SO high is because the customers are SO happy? …thanks again Paul, real in-depth.
“By the way, DellDailyNews, DellMinute, DellNN, DellSurfer, DellCentral, etc. domain names are all still available.”
Classic.
And, what everybody else said.
This guy should be drug into the street and beaten with hammers.
MW: zipper. As in, hope Thurrot doesn’t cut his lip on Dell’s zipper. Ba-zing! I’ll be here all week, folks.
Face it, a company or product that affects roughly 2% of your life does not deserve the worship that some of you give to it.
Pardon me if I think your last line is complete hogwash. I have to say that my switch to Mac has affected MUCH more than 2% of my life. I *know* that the switch has freed up a lot of time I would normally be using to run maintenance on my old PC, or trouble-shoot a new problem. With the Mac, I get to work, finish my work, and get done quicker than I used to on my old PC. That means I can go for a walk with my daughter, or take her out shopping, or spend more time cooking a good meal, or do other chores around my home. That’s a big part of my life that used to have to be put on hold when my old PC would go wonky. So to say one company’s products can only affect 2% of a person’s life is seriously understating the matter.
Also, I had hopes for Thurrott, he seemed to be making a turnaround, but I guess everyone slips now and then. I would like to point out that these surveys are done at random, and no matter how many “insanely loyal” fans Apple has, unless you are called and surveyed, you cannot stuff the ballot Box for Apple. Thurrott should have known this before he penned that asinine phrase.
Good job Captain Obvious.
Whenever the idiot needs hits on his site, the stupidity factor gets kicked up a notch.
I wish I could get rid of this crappy Power Mac and get one of those fantastic Dell machines–but if I do that it will hurt my beloved Apple!
Yeah, that makes sense.
NO FAIR! Dell’s ratings are skewed by their insanely unsatisfied customers!
And Paul was making such good progress — he’d actually posted several articles lately that not only avoided any knee-jerk mind-wiped M$-zombie-isms but actually had some reasonable, positive things to say about Apple. He must have missed his meds the day he wrote this latest article….
I bet you that if DELL, HP IBM and a hos of others had a insanely loyal customer base like Apple, they would cheer and sing flashy, flashey loyal ones. Get a life Thurrott. Many compaines wish they had a loyal base.
Take GM, Ford, HD (sorry HD, you have a loyal base)
Doesn’t loyalty result from customer satisfaction?
—
OMIGOD.. LOGIC
Perhaps the loyalty comes from being satisfied by a product, hence the point of having a brand in the first place! WOW!
Thurrott tries to bail out Dell by calling Mac users lunatics, but alas, remembers he owns an iPod and a Powerbook.. damn
He then remembers that Macs have no viruses while Windows have zillions, and hey.. maybe using the safer, more advanced platform isn’t lunacy…
PT isn’t the brightest of the bunch.
And here’s a guy who says Mac’s don’t get viruses because there aren’t that many of us. Now all of a sudden Apple is more reliable only because us Mac users are loyal to the brand. But Thurott there aren’t that many of us.
FUD! Mac’s have always been more reliable and I doubt that will ever change.
DakRoland you are so right. But you see that’s the problem with Thurott. He has no facts when he writes his stupidity. So stupid is as stupid does and he does it all the time when writing about Apple and there products.
He is a Microsoft kiss ass.
These pundits are always so short-sighted. They never look at the fact that perhaps the reason Apple customers are so loyal is BECAUSE we’re so satisfied. It’s much easier to just believe that we follow Steve around like he’s the Pied Piper. He’s one to talk about skewed opinions. He’s got something brown on his nose and it smells like Gates.
That’s OK. I feel better about the world when Thurrott is anti-Apple.
So Dell customer satisfaction, which was 79% to Apple’s 81%, has dropped to 74%. So that 3% (now 8%) difference makes Apple users “insanely loyal”?
I’m surprised that on average Apple customers are only 81% satisfied! I would put my satisfaction at 95%, and that’s only because I am running a seven year old machine, I would love to get my hands on a G5, insanely fast would make me INSANELY happy!
What about “WindowsDailyNews, WindowsMinute, WindowslNN, WindowsSurfer, WindowsCentral”?
I hate M$, Dell, etc. and just dislike Apple.
Tommy says: “Typical liberal view of I’m misable so misery should be spread around equally. Or, the Apple insanely loyal are right-wing kooks!”
What a load. Put a sock in it Tommy; I’m politically ‘agnostic’, but I can say in all honesty that my conservative friends & family members are almost uniformly more miserable to be around than my liberal equivilants. There’s always someone to hate, or resent, or want revenge on – it’s among the more bizarre things I’ve ever seen. This, despite the fact that they generaly make more money then the liberals I know, and have their party of choice currently controlling all branches of the government … go figure.
In the meantime, Tommy-Boy, go crawl back under your McCarthy Era fallout shelter and wait for the Second Coming like a good jack-booted thug … the adults would like to have an intelligent conversation.
Many of you may not be aware that Paul is New Englander and a keen fan of both the New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox.
Now, whilst both teams have recently been champions of their respective sports, one could argue that anybody who has supported the Red Sox for most of the last sixty or seventy years has displayed what can only be described as the triumph of hope over experience or, to be more extreme, insane loyalty.
The only difference is that Apple has pretty much delivered some great products every couple of years on average over the last thirty years and then you gave them your money if you wanted to buy something, whereas the Red Sox took your money and only give you something to shout about (a pennant or a World Series) every 10 years or so in the same period – a pleasure that only lasts until the next season begins (say six months) as opposed to a Macintosh which has the ability to make your life more reasonable for three to five years or so.
If anyone knows how much an “average” Red Sox season ticket costs, could they post the information: there is probably some mathematical formula that we could define that will actually reveal that a Red Sox fan is far more rabidly insane than any customer of Apple Computer.
And thank you, Odyssey67 for saying it. “There’s always someone to hate, or resent, or want revenge on . . . ” And the bigotry. Geez. I’ve never heard such name calling. And the justifications are so absurd.
Oh, my, Odyssey67, so you’re politically “agnostic”? Just so I understand, at least according to the popular, standard definition of the word, that means you’re pretty sure that politics don’t exist?
If so, why are you choosing to assail anyone who takes any side of any issue? That flies in the face of your acclaimed agnosticism. Seems like all you wanted to do with that post was tell Tommy off. Where’s the intelligent conversation in your post beyond that?
Personally, I think PT must be made of some sort of rubbery material that allows him to bend and twist in multiple directions at once (to say nothing of what that must mean for his brain).
Cheese, Odyssey67…
For a political “agnostic,” you sure do use a lot of standard leftist taunts. “McCarthy era,” “Second Coming,” and “jack-booted thug” all in one sentence? I thought only hard-lefties like Michael Moore talked like that about people they disagree with. The “adults are talking” insult was a nice touch also. What — no “Nazi” reference?
In my experience, it’s the leftists who seem completely miserable to be around most of the time.
MW: friends — as in “why can’t we be friends?”
Dell — that’s the company that makes computers with cheap plastic cases and that wonky operating system that features viruses and spyware, right? I can’t imagine why they don’t have a loyal customer base.
Can we please take up a collection to send all tech writers back to school so they actually know what they are talking about. Does he really think that compnies would pay ASCI for study data if the results were biased or easily skewed.
He’s jused pissed because he only recieved a satisfaction rating of -3 from readers of his trash.
To quote Bugs Bunny: “what a maroon!”
MDN Magic Word: given … as in, idiocy is a given from him
Thurott, you fucking low life hack, you’re sounding more and more like a Republican apologist.
My email to Mr. Thurrott
“Just a thought. Could it be that Dell’s customers aren’t fanatically loyal because Dell’s products/service aren’t as good as they should be?
Do you have a date in mind, when you are going to stop being a Wintel apologist, and become an objective reporter?”
His email address: thurrott@windowsitpro.com
Bite me.
Kate
Everyone posting earlier pretty much hit the nail on the head with this “village idiot”.
I just wanted to publicly state that this guy is real f*cking dumb ass.
But still, how do I get a job to right bullsh*t and get paid for it?
I’d like to skew Thurrott with my skewer.
http://www.dellrumors.com/
This one isn’t available
Great comment MacShafter!
Thurrott really, REALLY is just one big tit. I keep thinking perhaps the guy is OK, but as of now I think he’s not even from planet earth.
Having said that Apple does have an insanely loyal customer base – AND it is GROWING by leaps and bounds. Look on and wonder why it’s not you Michael Dell and Bill Gates!
Inanely loyal eh?
Well maybe turdrott actually thought about it for a minute!
Mac users ARE insanely loyal – because we know Apple makes the best designed hardware and software in the business.
I AM PROUD TO SAY I AM INSANELY LOYAL – SO FCUK U TURDROT (Microsoft’s bum boy).
I am also an ex-windows user – so my insanity is based on hard facts and experience with the windblows remedial OS. Add the the fact that when I was using windows I lost 10yrs of work on the crap pc I had too.
Believe me – that would have never happened on a mac running OSX.
SO SUCK IT MOTHERFCUKER!
I’m with MacMaster – there is a certain similarity to Republican apologists. Take all of the bullshit that the Republicans have gotten away with lately, like Rove revealing an undercover CIA agent’s identity, Dubya lying to get support for the Iraq “war” (WMD??), Dubya trying to justify the war recursively (as in, we should let more of our troops get killed in Iraq so that all of the ones we’ve sent to die so far haven’t died in vain), and so on. Thurrott and the Republicans obviously take us all for a bunch of idiots, and I personally resent it. Americans deserve better that Windows and Republican BS.
“Take all of the bullshit that the Republicans have gotten away with lately, like Rove revealing an undercover CIA agent’s identity,”
Democrat BS. Based upon the information available at this point in time it would appear that this isn’t what happened. You and your asinine Democrat pals keep making that claim, but it’s a LIE.
“Dubya lying to get support for the Iraq “war” (WMD??),”
For it to be a “lie” he would have had to have been claiming something which he KNEW to be false. To have faulty Military Intelligence — Intelligence which the Clinton Administration accepted at true — and to act based upon that faulty Intelligence is not the same as lying.
“Dubya trying to justify the war recursively (as in, we should let more of our troops get killed in Iraq so that all of the ones we’ve sent to die so far haven’t died in vain), and so on.”
So … pull out now? How more IDIOTIC can you get than that! The result would be an utter DISASTER … and then you would blame the President for THAT. Ass wipe.
“Thurrott and the Republicans obviously take us all for a bunch of idiots, and I personally resent it. Americans deserve better that Windows and Republican BS.”
You would prefer the Democrat BS, eh? Figures.
MDN Magic Word: “cold” … as in your shit is VERY cold. And WHAT THE HELL are you doing posting it here?????
In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is to speak?
“Phaedrus”
This thread showed that old problem with pundits still are very much alive and kicking. Technology and politics alike.
“By the way, DellDailyNews, DellMinute, DellNN, DellSurfer, DellCentral, etc. domain names are all still available.” Oh my, you’re such a stitch!