Buick, Lexus top J.D. Power survey, as vehicle service improves overall

Fri, Mar 17 2017

Buick and Lexus returned to their customary place atop J.D. Power's scorecard of satisfaction with dealership service departments. In the Customer Service Index Study, out Thursday, Buick scored 860 on a 1,000-point scale for mass-market brands and has topped this ranking in three of the past four years.

Lexus topped the list of luxury brands with a score of 874.

Fiat and Land Rover were the bottom-dwellers in the two categories.

Buick and Lexus also ranked highly in the research company's overall Vehicle Dependability Study rankings out recently.

The customer experience at car dealerships has improved steadily, with the overall industry score rising in seven of the past eight years. And one statistic is particularly remarkable: 94 percent of customers say their car was fixed right the first time.

The dominant area of difficulty in repairs seems to be infotainment systems. Only 80 percent of respondents said their stereo was fixed right the first time. And in last month's Vehicle Dependability Study, J.D. Power reported that infotainment systems were the most commonly reported vehicle issue, accounting for 22 percent of all problems reported, up 2 percent from the previous year.

J.D. Power surveyed 70,000 customers for the Customer Service Index Study. For the Vehicle Dependability Study, it surveyed 35,186 first owners of 2014 model-year vehicles after three years of ownership.

Below are charts for both the current study and the complementary overall brand dependability survey.

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By Greg Rasa