Clark Howard's Tips
May 20, 2008
The new quarterly results from the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) have been released.
While Clark usually comes out of the gate with news of who's stinking it up, he's decided to begin with one industry that's doing great -- the package delivery business. FedEx earns an 85 this quarter, while UPS is right behind them with an 83. Keep in mind that this is out of a scale of 100. Anything in the 70s is considered a passing grade. USPS scored a major coup, meanwhile, reversing several past failures with a score of 74.
Among the flunkees, we have Sprint in the cell phone business. The carrier earned a 56 while Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile were all in the low 70s.
The cell carriers all fiercely compete with each other. Not so in the monopoly-dominated world of cable and satellite TV. And the numbers don't lie, either; every last cable/satellite provider failed. Direct TV was the least of the worst, while Dish Network had a big decline. The worst score of the entire index was 54, earned by both Comcast and Charter.
In the airline sector, US Air also took home a 54 to make it the worst airline for customer satisfaction in the United States. The full-fares all failed, with American and Continental selected as the "best" because they earned 62 each. Among the discounters, Southwest scored an industry-wide high of 79. In fact, Southwest has been No. 1 for 14 years in a row. Other discounters were too small to note individually, but had a combined blended score of 75.
Is it any wonder that the industries you hear repeated complaints about on the show got the lousiest scores? Clark thinks not.
Consumer advice courtesy of
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