I've always heard about Jd Powers' coveted award. They relate products and services and rate them on a variety of factors. When a goods wins the award, they often let customers know via their advertising.
But how spoton is this information? Well, in some respects it's very good. In others, it's missing something.
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They compile their facts solely from buyer surveys. As long as they have a large sufficient sample this is good information, but in some cases it's incomplete. For example, customers may be very pleased with a inevitable car, but Jd Powers doesn't comprise crash test ratings. I would for real want to know that about a car before I bought it. What about insurance? They have ratings on all from cost to claims, so they must have surveyed some customers who had claims. I would also love to see the policies reviewed by an scholar who could collate coverage. I'm sure their process for sending out surveys and collecting data is audited by a third party, just like financial statements are. As long as you know how they get their information, that's fine. You probably still have some investigate to do before you buy.
Here's one qoute that concerns me, though. Clubs have to pay Jd Powers to have their goods reviewed. If they win an award, they have to pay again to use their name in their advertising. This doesn't mean that the ratings are suspect. They have a credit to protect, and I'm pretty sure that there survey methods are very good and well documented. The money issue does gift a few problems, though.
Not all products or services in a kind will be reviewed. I saw a kind with less than ten Clubs reviewed. That's only a small fraction of the Clubs that make this single product. And what about Clubs that participate, but routinely end up at the lowest of the ratings? Why would they pay money to share again?
Of procedure any firm would have to make money somehow to pay for all the work involved in conducting the surveys. They don't sell a magazine like buyer Reports.
Maybe they should have memberships, like the great firm Bureau does. Clubs would pay a fee to be audited for inevitable minimum requirements. If they don't meet these requirements, they can't come to be members. They could use this designation in their advertising so that customers know that Jd Powers has verified that they've met these requirements. Then they could take the money from memberships and use it to survey customers of all products and services in a category, not just those that are members. This would be more useful to the Clubs who rate the highest because customers could see how they stack up against all of their competitors.
Jd Powers Ratings - How Good Are They?