Samsung gets a below average customer service rating in the US

THE AMERICAN CUSTOMER SERVICE INDEX (ACSI) has revealed that Samsung scored a below average rating of 71, placing it below rivals LG, HTC and Motorola.

The Korean phone maker saw its customer service rating slip four per cent since April 2011, despite seeing huge success with its Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone. ACSI said that this could be because of the manufacturer's reliance on the Android operating system, although Samsung was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

It's even worse news for the Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM), which got the lowest rating at just 69. This makes the firm the "least satisfying" mobile phone company in the US, which isn't so surprising considering last year's high-profile server crash.

"Companies with weak customer satisfaction often have weak stock performance," said Claes Fornell, ACSI founder. "RIM's sales are slumping amid a bevy of problems, from hardware and software issues to server lapses that have caused email and messaging outages. Over the past year, share price for RIM has virtually collapsed."

It might be bad news for Samsung and RIM, but it's a completely different story for Apple, which lead the ACSI ratings with a score of 83. Apple's nearest competitors in the ACSI ratings saw three companies tied at 75 - LG, HTC and, most surprisingly, Nokia. µ