Bias Against Domestic Cars

It's ALL opinion since no one has to send in any documentation to support their claims. If someone wants to ignore the problems they can just answer "no problems". You don't seem to understand human nature. For this kind of survey to have any real validity beyond being a popularity contest it would have to be based on DOCUMENTED work orders for repairs of all these vehicles, say from the records of a leasing company or taxi fleet. We've had mostly GM in our government fleet for over 20 years and we just don't have much in the way of problems with them yet to listen to the critics we'd be lucky if half of them were running at any given point in time. The last new GM I had (95 caprice) required perhaps $1000 in actual non-wear item repairs (both in and out of warranty) in the 12 years and 140K miles of service. The entirety of it's repairs was to fix two electric windows and one sensor on the transmission. Yet some fool on the CU survey could, and probably would, put down 3 major repairs while swearing they'd never buy another domestic.

Not at all, I've seen their questionnaire.

Sorry but human nature is such that the typical Toyota owner, who bought it because it was supposed to be so great, is not going to acknowledge that he paid a higher price and has just as many problems as he's had with every other car. So he's going to forget about half the repairs and not even list them. And to cement the rightness of his decision he'll say he'd buy one again. OTOH, the Chevy owner shrugs nothing off. He feels like he did GM a favor buying the car in the first place and by god if there is a defect he's going to make them pay dearly by giving it lots of poor ratings - that'll teach em.

You don't understand that people rarely tell the truth for a wide variety of reasons. And the CU survey depends 100% on the respondents telling the truth about what is, to a large number of people, a very emotionally charged large $$ purchase.

Reply to
Ashton Crusher
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There are two parts to the auto issue. One part is the survey, the other part is the editorial comment by their testers.

IMO, the bias comes in the editorial part. Like the Suzuki rollover issue that was proven to be problematic with CR.

The survey portion has some merit, but we don't know a lot of how the questions were answered. Do owners of some makes tend to forget about minor problems more or less than owners of other makes? One respondent may think nothing of the time the radio did not work for a week and had to be replaced and forget to mark it while another may be PO'd that one day driving under power lines he had static on his favorite station 150 miles away and he tells everyone about the crappy radio. .

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

They state the sample size for the whole survey, and they also state that they leave out models for which they get too low a number or responses for the data to be statistically valid. Fortunately the survey is so large that only really niche vehicles are left out for lack of data.

LOL, sure you did. It's interesting that all the things I reported on so early turned out to be completely true, and resulted in recalls or special service campaigns by Saturn. You debunked nothing. But if it makes you feel good to think that you did, go right ahead believing it.

Saturn's demise was a direct result of their basing an entire company on marketing hype that could not fool enough people to sustain the business, and could not overcome the fact that the vehicles were unreliable. When CR and J.D. Power pointed out these facts, you saw the same kind of sour grapes you see now with the claims of bias.

Reply to
SMS

You were pretty much waging a trolling campaign against Saturn. Way over the top. Fake trolling names and all. Pretty much like the domestic guys will go after Toyota now for the gas pedal problem that's killed some people, and how they went after the Toyota head gasket and sludging problems. No real difference. Just one biased person complaining about others' bias. Happens all the time. Mob mentality. Don't feel bad about. But fight it. No sense being a punching bag. And try to look at the big picture.

--Vic

Reply to
Vic Smith

Hey Caviller! Long time no hear. Those were fun days when Steve was playing the fool. Persistent cuss, wasn't he? He did have some good points about Saturn timing chain lubrication/failures, just somewhat over the top. He was touting the Toyota he owned of course. Pretty proud of how he flew from S.F to LA to cut a deal on it and take advantage of dealer price differentials. He did a good job on that, and is to be commended. He really "loved" that Toyota. And here he is - a CR subscriber I guess - claiming people aren't biased. hehe.

--Vic

Reply to
Vic Smith

Lol. "Hi! We surveyed a million of our own readers, so OF COURSE that means our results are accurate!" If that's enough to satisfy your intellecutual curiousity, so be it.

Thanks to Google, thousands of your anti-Saturn and anti-domestic rants still exist in the archives. A monkey can hit the bullseye with a dart once in a while, but it's all the horrible misses that provide a good chuckle.

Haven't owned a Saturn in nearly a decade, so I'm really not interested except to note your bias on the topic of this thread. Since CR showed the S-series to be generally reliable, contrary to your claims above, that doesn't even provide a basis for sour grapes. It only provides irony that you put so much trust into their reliability data, but ignore any results that you don't like.

As for bias, it would be nice to live in a world where you can believe everything you see from the media at face value and know that every study and statistic is accurate. Sadly, in the world where I live, being naive usually means being a sucker and being duped. Here, we would just have to blindly assume CR has no bias, because they hide away all their methodology and statistical information for some mysterious reason. I admit, I do like your world better.

Reply to
caviller

Plus, the unintentional bias comes from the part that because they survey only their own readers, 100% of the resonses are influenced by the editorial content.

Put aside a survey of questionable scientific validity that wouldn't pass an undergraduate marketing exam. Put aside the results that wouldn't hold up in any peer reviewed statistics journal. Put aside any personal biases on the part of the management or editors. This one issue makes everything else suspect. The results could be reasonably accurate. Or maybe not. You'll never know. Even if they are, I don't find the difference of 2 reported issues (of unknown severity and cost) over 7 years to be all that significant between a typical Ford and a typical Honda. The reality is that their own results are exaggerating small differences by showing them as percentages above/below an average number instead of showing them as absolutes.

Reply to
caviller

On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:26:09 -0800, SMS fired up the etcha-a-sketch and scratched out:

Saturn vehicles are unreliable?

They're small, but I never knew them to be unreliable.

Reply to
PerfectReign

So you believe that a CR reader that bought a Ford or Chevy is more likely to admit to problems than a CR reader that bought a Toyota or Honda? Where's your evidence of that, LOL?

The survey isn't "what's your opinion of the reliability of xyz brand," it's detailed questions on problems you've had with the vehicle you own.

Reply to
SMS

Look at the J.D. Power long term dependability results if you don't believe Consumer Reports.

Reply to
SMS

Yeah, some things never change. Not in our case, though. Three kids later and we have a Honda minivan and now a Toyota Prius. Nothing against domestics. I'd have rather had a Fusion Hybrid, especially for the extra room and superior crash protection. Unfortunately, those available at the time were almost $10k more expensive than our base Prius. Funny thing, CR has had mixed reviews on the Prius, too. We bought one anyway. From reading owner forums, you'd think the chronic complaints amounted to a lemon, but they rate pretty well in reliability according to CR, also. Go figure!

Hadn't thought about my Saturn in a while. Decent enough car at the time. I do miss my stereo system. These days, it's factory stereo and sports/news radio as I run the kids around town. Pathetic, I know, but not as bad as trolling newsgroups in a personal war against certain products or companies.

Reply to
caviller

Whether I believe it or not is irrelevant. Doing a survey in this fashion opens up the results to various biases and errors not present in a scientific, randomly sampled survey. But you're right about one thing, there's no way to prove it. Why? Because CR keeps all their methodology secret. There's no way to know how they massage their data, unlike what you'd find in any respectable peer reviewed medical, economics, statistics or other scientific journal. You appear to trust CR blindly, at least when it suits your agenda. I remain skeptical. I can live with that.

Reply to
caviller

So you also distrust J.D. Power whose results almost always are the same as what CR finds, just with less detail on each sub-system's reliability?

These complaints about CR never change and never have any validity. The people that complain are those that feel that a poor rating somehow makes them look bad for having not researched their purchase carefully. Yet an attitude of "don't make the same mistake I did" would be better than trying to induce others to make the same mistake they did, with the added benefit of encouraging the manufacture to correct the problems rather than to spend their money on marketing and advertising trying to con more naive consumers into making a poor purchasing decision. These people will find something to complain about in every survey by every entity.

If all the Saturn owners that were so quick to dismiss Consumer Reports and J.D. Power survey results had instead directed their energies toward encouraging Saturn to correct the reliability problems than maybe Saturn would have had sufficient sales to be able to continue in business.

Reply to
SMS

You still don't seem to understand the bias inherent in the pre-selected (subscribers) and self-selecting respondents to their survey. Think of it this way, if FOX news (or any other channels news) polled their listeners asking them to rate the "level of satisfaction" with TV news shows, do you think the results would be a meaningful reflection on which news shows the "average" person finds satisfactory?

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

JD Power? I haven't looked at their information in many years. I also did not mention them on this thread. In general, I do tend not to give the benefit of the doubt to any media source that hides their methodology and statistical information, then puts results into dumbed down circles. I read my monthly CR magazine with a grain of salt, but it's fine if you don't share the same skepticism. Heck, I know many people that treat CR like holy text and buy nothing but their top rated items, simply because they think that a lack of advertising guarantees a lack of bias. To each their own. It is a free country. Where the amusement comes in is with people that swear by some magazine (or other media source), except when they discover it doesn't support some specific agenda. Hypocrites are funny. So, which one is it? Do you think CR is always unbiased and accurate? Or, do you think they were wrong to give a good reliability verdict to the Saturn S-series sedans?

Why would Saturn S-series owners dismiss CR's reliability ratings when they were generally good? Despite changing the topic again, you're still not making any sense. As for reliability, even based on Consumer Reports, most vehicles these days are pretty reliable and warranties are pretty good. For me, reliability is far less important to me today than it was 20 years ago. I'd rather buy on the basis of safety, convenience, comfort, performance, etc. On the other hand, if I published Consumer Reports, I'd sure want reliability to seem like a big deal. Those results sell a lot of copy and they need to hype them as much as possible. And so, some people buy primarily on a perception of reliability because that's what is important to them. Again, it's a free country.

Reply to
caviller

How about I don't think of a company with a news channel doing a survey of which is the best news channel? Maybe you could explain how such a survey is in any way related to a non-profit, independent consumer organization doing a statistically sound survey--but I doubt it.

You still fail to understand that Consumer Reports and J.D. Power aren't asking _anyone_ to rate vehicles. They're asking owners what problems they've had with the vehicles they own. From those answers they get their ratings. The J.D. Power ratings are from a random survey. The CR ratings are from surveys that subscribers choose to return. The results are always very similar. No one is asking a Toyota owner what their opinion of Fords is or vice-versa.

Those that complain that CR surveys are filled out by subscribers are just looking for something, anything, to complain about because they don't like the results. No doubt there's something about the J.D. Power surveys that they also can find that they don't like. Nothing but a double-blind survey would satisfy them (and most likely that would not satisfy them either)l; they're very bitter and angry.

Reply to
SMS

Very true, but it's a good way to get high mileage data in a short period of time for analysis purposes.

Derek

Reply to
Derek Gee

On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:09:01 -0800, SMS fired up the etcha-a-sketch and scratched out:

I just know that my wife's five-year-old Vue has had zero issues.

Sure it is small and very compact, but it has been reliable.

Reply to
PerfectReign

Is that the one with the Honda V6 and Honda transmission in it? GM used a Honda engine from 2004 to 2007 model years, according Wikipedia.

Reply to
dr_jeff

The engine is from Honda, not sure about the transmission.

Reply to
SMS

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