magazine reviews: brand reliability

bnorth

I've noticed that which magaznie has started to put a "brand reliability" score by some reviews eg Bosch and Miele are above average for washing machines.
But some other items don't have this - we dont' see brand scores for Panasonic, Sony etc in the DVD recorder section.

I admit I haven't had a good read of Which to know why but that seems strange.
Worse PC mags never (hardly ever) have brand reliabiliy scores and often give best buy awards to PC makers who have lots of complaints about product reliabilty and customer service - caveat emptor.

hollydays

Some of those products don't have long lives?

vyle

I don't put much faith in Which reviews anyway.

But regarding the magazines reviewing customer service and reliability. If the item they got sent works, then it works. It's not really possible to review customer service when something goes wrong if the thing they're reviewing hasn't gone wrong.

bnorth

vyle wrote: »

I don't put much faith in Which reviews anyway.

But regarding the magazines reviewing customer service and reliability. If the item they got sent works, then it works. It's not really possible to review customer service when something goes wrong if the thing they're reviewing hasn't gone wrong.

thanks, vyle,
so I wonder how Which do assess brand reliability
there must be ways - customer surveys !
in Which's defence they do I think buy the products they review ( anonymously ?)
I know most PC mags get sent review models for free - and of course the PC maker will make very very sure that model works well - Joe Bloggs might not be so lucky

bnorth

so I suppose over the (recent) years Which will have bought lots of models from a particular company - maybe its based on how many they had probs with and how easy it was to get them fixed.

RadoJo

Is it possible that because Sony makes such a broad range of products, that any reliability which invokes the 'brand' might vary greatly between divisions e.g their sound systems might be highly rated but their PCs aren't? I might be wrong - it only occurred to me because I associate Miele and Bosch with appliances and not much else!