For many computer reviewers, including myself, Packard Bell has been beneath contempt for several years–stained by a reputation for churning out low-cost Windows PCs at the expense of both quality and customer service. The only buyers for Packard Bell systems, we pundits believed, were newbies who wandered into stores without knowing which brand-names to avoid.
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At its low point in 1994 and 1995, Packard Bell had significantly more “DOA” systems–dead-on-arrival PCs that didn’t work when first taken out of the box–than industry averages, and walled itself off from angry customers with impenetrable busy signals on customer-support phone lines.
But Packard Bell claims to have put itself through a major transformation in the past two years, successfully fixing many of its quality and service problems. I’m not quite ready to say Packard Bell is an industry leader in these areas, but I do believe the time has come to lift the “don’t even think about it” ban.
I’m willing to consider Packard Bell’s rehabilitation for two reasons.
First, Packard Bell has been a friend to ordinary consumers by consistently pushing down PC prices. The company, now officially known as Packard Bell NEC Inc. and based in Sacramento, Calif., started the stampede to PCs priced under $1,000 in early 1997 and in May set a new low-price mark of $699 for national brands.
Second, Packard Bell has new owners. NEC, the Japanese computer and electronics giant, has gradually been assuming a bigger role in Packard Bell management and advanced its stake in the company to a 53 percent controlling majority in early August. In its other product lines, such as computer monitors and CD-ROM drives, NEC has a consistent reputation for quality.
Packard Bell also continues to be a major force in the computer industry, even as other players–most notably Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and IBM–have staked out more and more turf in the consumer market. The San Jose market research firm Dataquest Inc. says Packard Bell accounted for one-fourth of all PCs sold in retail stores in the United States during the first half of 1998.
To gauge where Packard Bell stands today, I spoke with representatives of three magazines that track PC quality and service–Consumer Reports, PC and PC World–as well as checking in with several other experts who keep close watch on the consumer PC market.
Here’s the consensus that emerged from those conversations: Packard Bell is now matching industry averages for quality, as measured in DOA rates and the need for systems to be repaired after purchase. The company also appears to have made progress in customer service, as measured by responsiveness on its telephone support lines, but may still have a way to go.
In its July 1998 issue, PC magazine gave Packard Bell low marks for customer service and reliability.
“Even after making a large investment in a Utah technical-support facility, Packard Bell still gets a `D.’ In fact, for the second year in a row, Packard Bell is below average on all three satisfaction measures,” the magazine wrote. “Only an average score for repair frequency keeps Packard Bell from an `E.’ Packard Bell also gets the worst score for customers `getting the runaround’ from the company’s technical-support staff, twice as bad as the survey average.”
The magazine got these results by mailing surveys to 17,000 of its readers in January, with about half sending back responses. In fairness to Packard Bell, its poor standing on customer service could reflect problems customers encountered in 1997 and earlier years.
Consumer Reports, in June 1998, looked at two Packard Bell models and in both cases concluded, “Good overall, but there are better choices.”
PC World will present its next survey of PC reliability and service in the November issue. An editor gave me an advance peek at their conclusions: Packard Bell is now industry-average in reliability and repairs, but still lags slightly in responding to customer complaints.
I also spoke to Mal Ransom, Packard Bell’s senior vice president of marketing. He told me the company has made “a major, major commitment” to better customer service. “For the last year,” he added, “we have been at and above industry standards.”
Why should you care about all this?
Packard Bell is just now introducing its autumn lineup, including a $699 model that undercuts most of its competitors by about $100.
I borrowed that model–the Multimedia 820–and discovered a machine that, while not perfect, delivered a reasonable value for the money.
The 820, whose price doesn’t include a monitor, is powered by an MII 300 megahertz MMX processor from Cyrix, with 32 megabytes of random-access memory, a 3.2-gigabyte hard disk, a 32X CD-ROM drive, a 56 kilobits-per-second modem meeting the new V.90 standard and two USB connectors. On the software side, the machine comes with Windows 98 and a bundle of applications including Microsoft Works, Microsoft Word 97 and a version of the Quicken personal finance program.
In my test drive, I found the 820 easy to get running, coming with a clearly illustrated Quick Setup sheet and color-coded cables. The machine worked the first time I turned it on, and displayed no signs of trouble during five days of operation.
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