Lenovo responds to SquareTrade notebook reliability analysis

In a world defined by spin, a thin veneer of professional authority can get you a lot. Thereupon, you need read this letter from a PR flack at Lenovo sent to Blorge in response to a story we ran on SquareTrade notebook reliability data, which says that a Taiwanese netbook maker makes the most reliable notebooks.

Is it really possible that Asus has more reliable products that Apple and Lenovo, two notebook brands known far and wide for quality and reliability? That’s an interesting question and one that deserves some attention, and that’s just what were going to give it — with a blowtorch.

Source: SquareTrade

Without further ado, here’s Ray Gorman, Executive Director, External Communications, Lenovo:

I believe the key point of the story is that Square Trade has a vested interested in showing scary failure rates as they have done here — they are in the business of selling after sale warranties.

SquareTrade claims their study is based on data from over 30,000 laptops, including nine computer manufacturers and three different laptop categories (netbooks, entry-level laptops, and premium Laptops). This equates to an average sample size of just over 1,000 per group. In an industry where according to IDC, 142.5 million laptops were sold worldwide last year, the total number claimed in this report is not a statistically significant sample for a study where no attempt is made to control key variables affecting repair rates, such as comparable machine types, end users, geography, and applications.

For example, Lenovo’s repair data examined by end-user type tells us to expect a 10X difference in repair rates between systems bought for K-12 students and systems used only in a home office by adults. SquareTrade’s methodology would simply lump these together which would produce highly inaccurate and unusable data.

In addition, the systems in the study were self-selected from systems SquareTrade provided warranty service on. There is no indication as to whether there were equal numbers of systems from each company or whether the systems from each company were from a similar “line.” In other words, they could have used only ‘premium’ laptops from one company and netbooks from another. There could have been 1,000 machines in the study from one company and 5,000 from another.

The reality is that we (and I expect all manufacturers) study our failure rates both scientifically and continuously, across many sample groups worldwide and over the last three-year period, Lenovo’s failure rates are at least two-thirds lower than what is claimed in the SquareTrade survey. PC hardware is extremely reliable, and this study is full of holes. The method is flawed, the data is inaccurate, and the conclusion is wrong.

Ray Gorman, Executive Director,

External Communications, Lenovo

He raises some good points, which really beg a response from SquareTrade and, more importantly, some real transparency about how they plan to collect and parse future data.

Again, we know Lenovo wants to sell us notebook computers and SquareTrade is pushing notebook insurance (i.e. the idea of reliability). So, whereas SquareTrade’s data was reported as news and Lenovo’s take an editorial, there really isn’t any fundamental difference between the two in terms of authenticity or reliability — they’re both companies that want your money and need your trust to get it.

Which company do you think presents a more compelling case?

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