Ram says that Consumer Reports rating is because of customer ignorance

6393 Views 16 Replies 12 Participants Last post by zoomie, Nov 5, 2014

Panther Dash

Discussion Starter · Nov 3, 2014

The new head of FCA's Ram division says that Ram's dismal showing in the Consumer Reports' reliability study is because of customer ignorance in the face of new technology.

Bob Hegbloom says that the average pickup truck on the road is 11 years old, therefore many customers are unfamiliar with new technologies.

CR pointed out infotainment systems as a "growing reliability plague" for auto makers. Its says this is because of poor design, not customer ignorance. Furthermore, it states that tech issues are usually not the only reason for low-ranking brands being where they are.

Sounds like Ram is just trying to deflect this criticism instead of acknowledging it. That scares me since I think that means Ram isn't in a hurry to change what they are doing.

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ED_Lover

· #5 · Nov 3, 2014

Consumer ignorance?! I design medical devices at a level of complexity well beyond what is going on in the 8.4" head unit and yet it took me over an hour to get my uConnect trial working with my phone. Even then it's flaky at best. I find RAM's statement arrogant and out of touch with the customer. If someone like me who works with electronics everyday can't easily figure it out, then the 10%MOREs of world won't have a prayer...

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ED_Lover

· #8 · Nov 3, 2014

Anomaly said:
Being an engineer doesn't help me when it comes to figuring out consumer electronics, in fact it makes it worse. I expect things to work as I would have designed them to work. The worst case scenario is when I can't figure out one of these pieces of crap, I let my 10 year old great grand son show me....

You're right, unfortunately the only kid around me is my 2 year old and he's too busy pushing random buttons to be much help.

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ED_Lover

· #10 · Nov 3, 2014

Katoom250SX said:
Quite frankly, CR is completely irrelevant to me. To each their own, but I feel my truck is heads and shoulders above some of my buddies "brand x" trucks in regards to electronics. I had absolutely no problems with my uconnect or any other portion of the 8.4 specifically. It literally took 5-8 minutes to sync and about a half hour of reading the manual and physically toying with the unit.

It's just like where I work. It was done one way for years and just in the last 7-8 years the electronic advances had forced some of the old timers out. Kind of unfortunate since some of them were great at what they did. Many came from a generation of no computers and the change showed overwhelming for some.

I 100% agree that the comments made by hegbloom were completely off base and much wiser verbiage should have been used, but it's a bit late now.

I agree, CR is irrelevant. Bob Hegbloom though is not which at least for me is where the beef is. When a director single-handedly alienates the majority of the customers paying his salary I think it's probably time for him to "resign".

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ED_Lover

· #15 · Nov 5, 2014

To call someone criticizing CR a sore loser is to be woefully ignorant of how CR conducts itself. It's easy to spout off stuff on a forum like this where the impulse of a thought is all it takes to post. Maybe try informing yourself on CR's methods and inconsistent standards, then come back. I think you'll find you're taken more seriously and can articulate your argument with more than pictures and "I think"s. Until then it's just noise.

To take my own advice, here is some cozy reading for those wooed by CR: Problems with Consumer Reports auto ratings: analyzing the analysts

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