As a Californian, I've managed to find a small bit of inspiration in the insanity of our current recall election. What has struck me is how all the polls are so widely disparate in their predictions of the results. And it's led me to the decision that I myself should run ... no, not for Governor of California. I've decided to run a poll.

Of course, my poll isn't going to be about anything as insignificant as politics. This week I'm announcing the second edition of my GripeLog Hall of Shame, which you can see in detail here. As expected, the list has not changed a great deal in the few months since I introduced it. Starting with the worst first, it now reads Intuit, Dell, Microsoft, VeriSign, Symantec, HP, Network Associates, and Oracle.

The most obvious change is the continuing rise (or decline) of Dell, and that brings up an issue I've heard from several quarters. "I find it perplexing that Dell ranks so high in the Hall of Shame -- a rating I wholeheartedly agree with -- yet somehow they still managed a B+ rating in the list of notebook computer makers in PC Magazine's August 5 issue," wrote one reader. "What is going on here? In my experience, 40-50% of the notebooks we buy from Dell have serious problems. However, according to PC Mag they are wonderful. Have the PC Mag ratings been tainted by advertising dollars or what? Whom are we supposed to believe anymore? Why does it always seem that real-world opinions in newsgroups and on your website seem to differ so vastly from the computer press?"

Now, I'm quite certain that PC Magazine's reader survey was done completely on the up-and-up. The editors themselves expressed some surprise that Dell did so well, because they were aware of the rising tide of complaints about the company. So why did their data give them such a different picture of Dell than what I've seen?

The fact is that customer satisfaction surveys often seem to describe a different reality than that portrayed by the gripers. For example, if I'd had a Hall of Shame ten years ago when I started the Gripe Line for InfoWorld, the top spot would have most definitely been occupied by Gateway. As Gateway officials later acknowledged to me, their service and support operations were in total chaos back then. And yet customer satisfaction surveys in the magazines at the time made it appear that everyone loved Gateway. InfoWorld's own reader surveys didn't show the dissatisfaction with the company that InfoWorld's readers were expressing to me.

Over the years, I've come to understand that surveys and polls are measuring something quite different from what gripes provide. Survey results show the reputation a company has built up over the course of many years, and that reputation does not change quickly. After all, most customers are satisfied customers, right up to the time they decide to cease to be a customer because they feel their faith has been abused.

On the other hand, I believe gripes are a leading indicator of where a company's reputation is going. The number of people who've griped about Dell represent a tiny fraction of those who stand ready to buy from the company, a fact that sales statistics and PC Magazine's results both validate. But that was also true for Gateway ten years ago. And I believe that Gateway ultimately paid a very heavy price for the problems it was having then, a price that's reflected in the relative sales rankings of Dell and Gateway to this day. So, be warned, Dell.

Gripes have their role, and so do customer surveys. But now my curiosity has been piqued. What would a poll of my readers show about Dell and its fellow occupants of the Hall of Shame, compared to other industry leaders? A poll won't help us in our primary duty of exposing sources of discontent, which is why I always say the GripeLog is not an unpopularity contest. But since my weblog engine makes running a poll easy (at least so my webmaster tells me), why not find out how many readers have good things to say about these companies? Perhaps it can even be a first step toward a "Hall of Fame" if it reveals any interesting surprises.

So I invite you to come to try out our poll on the right-hand side of this page where you'll see a list of companies. Click on the one company you think does the best job of treating its customers right. You'll immediately see your answer tabulated with the votes of other readers. Believe me, it will be a much more gratifying polling experience than the one we face here in California.

-------------------------

Post your comments about this column below or write me directly at Foster@gripe2ed.com. To receive this column every week in my free e-mail newsletter, please go to my subscription page and follow the instructions to opt-in for the EdFoster mailing list.