JDP does charge for use of their award logos, but that doesn't mean that their rankings aren't legitimate. If you look at their results over time, they are pretty consistent and logical, and the only companies who would want to use the logos are the ones who won in a category.

What you are implying is that companies that dont pay get rated poorly, and I just see no evidence of that. Some of the highest rated companies who are consistently highest rated never use the logos and therefore don't pay, for one.

 

LOL.

I worked in an industry thats has notoriously bad customer service and is widely hated by the public. We won the JD Power award multiple times.

Its meaningless. I remember them going on and on about how we had to win it. We won it and I was perplexed by it . Than it dawned on me....

 

cable/internet/cell provider?

 

yea those "dated" interiors. New Grand Cherokee L and Wagoneer arent even considered in this study.

 

I wouldnt say the Ram's interior is dated at all. Its actually pretty impressive that the implementation of uConnect in the Ram delivered this result.

 

I wont go near that

 

Would this mean Toyota and Lexus pay dearly for their lofty ratings?

 

Ah, so you're a lawyer.

(just kidding)

 

Congrats y'all were the least worst.

 

So JDP rated the "industry"? You can be in an industry that's bad, but be better than anyone else. This isn't evidence of pay to play at all. JDP isn't comparing cars to mattresses or smart phones. They are comparing only cars.

You may think that JDP is meaningless -- and I think the IQS is suspect -- but not for the reasons you are saying.

 

If a manufacturer is building quality cars with low numbers of defects, they don't need JDP's trumped up awards. I see JDP awards touted most by those manufacturers who need to convince the buying public they are better than their reputation, or better than CR's reliability ratings indicate.

 

Yet those companies aren't at the top of the rankings. If what you are saying is true, they would be because they are willing to pay for the rating.

You also find JD power dependability ratings are very similar to CR reliability ratings.

 

As you say the IQS is sometimes suspect but not meaningless. Quite often, if a customer is quite happy with his or her vehicle in the first 90 days (the length of the IQS), then he or she may not be as likely to b**ch when the first problem comes up, later, than if he or she had to take delivery of a lemon from Day One.

Even though today's new cars aren't perfect (witness last year's Explorers and Aviators), we have all, to an extent, been spoiled by today's quality-control. I can remember, in the 70s and 80s, when, if you simply closed your eyes, randomly picked any new car on the lot and gave it a test-drive, the chances were better then not that, even right off the assembly-line, it would have tires that were out of round, not properly-balanced, shimmies in the steering wheel, out-of-round brake rotors and pulsations in the brake-pedal, doors/hoods/trunks that didn't solidly-close precisely, scratches/bubbles/imperfections in the paint, screws/nuts.bolts not properly-tightened, loose trim parts, wavy-glass that distorted some vision-angles, instruments that didn't work, and/or a number of other faults. I can remember one car that had Dodge trim on one side and Plymouth trim on the other. Others where the power seats didn't work, or where some parts from the seats simply fell off on the floor. In fact, that was one reason why people started buying Toyotas and Hondas back then....their assembly plants had manage to lick most (but not all) of those problems long before American and some European brands did.

 

I don't think (and don't think I said) that a company pays to get a good rating, at least not for the IQS awards/rankings. I said in the past that JDP is bias because they take money from those they are reporting on. How can they not be? I can only imagine how that bias plays out because I don't work there. But, if JDP's work is science based, as compiling statistical data should be, anyone who knows science would agree JDP's methodology is flawed from a scientific perspective.

That said, JDP has a whole array of suspect award offerings, besides their IQS rankings. Personally, I have little concern with initial quality, as repairs are covered under warranty. I'm more concerned with reliability after the warranty expires. I know we have different perspectives on this because you lease and I buy. If JDP ranked and awarded vehicles for quality at five and ten years, I might be more interested in what they have to say, especially it those awards weren't sold to advertisers (as in CR's).

 

But that makes no sense. If they don't give preferential ratings to companies who pay for their marketing...where is the bias?

Please share with us how their methodology is flawed from a scientific perspective.

They have a Vehicle Dependability Study that looks at vehicle problems after 3 years. This is just their Initial Quality Study. They have a wide variety of studies.

And just because the information the study provides isnt of interest to you doesn't mean that its biased or flawed.