Bill,
Of course, people who are not happy with something complain louder than
those people who are happy brag about that. And this is not just about
Internet reviews. Internet just made it easier to be heard.
Besides, if you are an owner of a lemon that cost you some 5-digit sum,
you probably wouldn't really care if all other cars were perfect (but they
aren't anyway), would you? ;-)
For a more balanced picture in your case, you should've gone to similar
forums for other brands (GMC, Ford, etc.) and compare the level of
complaints and the type of issues.
But I would venture to say that the automotive industry as a whole
produces too much crap. Let me offer some simple analysis.
This article describes some interesting facts related to the J.P. Power
Initial Quality Study (IQS):
http://www.autonews.com/article/20170621/OEM01/170629948/2017-j-d-power-iqs-kia
Even for the best-rated by the IQS cars, the number of the problems
(within the first 90 days, even before the new smell weares out) is
extremely high. The lowest number (for Kia) is 72 per 100 vehicles. It
doesn't necessarily mean that 72% of new cars are defective, as I suspect
that some of the problems were for the same cars (or, otherwise, how would
you hit 148 per 100 cars for Jaguars?!), but even if we assume that on
average it is 2 problems per car, that's still a high number of more than
1/3 of new cars being defective, with the "industry average" at about 50%
(!)
As my old boss used to say: "they rank from crappy to worse".
What is surprising is that Kia's 72 problems per 100 vehicles is
praised:"This is without question the best quality the world has ever
seen". What?! Indeed, it is an improvement from the past. Being less bad
may deserve an encouragement, maybe an honorable mention (especially when
it concerns kids' behavior). But I have problems with awarding "less bad"
behavior in the adult world.
It is not just half-empty vs. half-full attitude. It is the distorted
notion of normalcy (and its acceptance by the population).
You wouldn't be OK if half of all milk packages in the store had listeria
or E.coli, would you? But we accept that at least 1/3-1/2 of all new cars
are defective. (If a car has a problem in the first 90 days, - that's a
defective product!)
Sorry for going this far OT...
Igor
Bill Thu, 22 Feb 2018 11:23:10 -0800 wrote:
The problem with internet reporting is that the people who feel they have
been treated poorly make noise far in excess of their numbers. I notice
this on the Titan Diesel forums where you would think that these trucks
can't make it across town without breaking down, and apparently they are
far better than the Rams, Fords and GMCs, which can barely get off the
driveway without a trip to the mechanic. I'm sure that Precision has had
it's fair share of failures, but I am fairly certain that the numbers are
not horribly skewed towards failures, no matter what the internet brayers
would have us think.
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