I agree with the findings. My satisfaction with Apple has dropped in the past couple of years. If not for the seeming stagnation of innovation, for sure the degradation of overall customer service both from AppleCare and in-store.
On the flip side, Samsung has been improving product quality, and improving customer support, so one can't just say Samsung can only go up. Samsung has always been a good product, they've just had Apple killing them in customer service, so a little rise in Samsung service, and a little drop in Apple service will kill the gap real quick.
Unfortunately I think Apple's best days are behind them. I have had 4 iDevices (iMac, iPhone, iPad, now a new iMac) which have failed within the first 90 days of owning them. Obviously this has an impact on my overall customer satisfaction, and while I understand things happen, it's how a company responds. It used to be that when things failed in a reasonable time, Apple really stepped up and tried to do right by the customer, yet in the last year with these failures, I've felt like I've had to push them to do the right thing in each instance.
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You're precisely correct. Us apple fans have always given them a little leeway because things have "just worked" ... for years we tolerated having a generation or two old technology in exchange for the reliability, but as of late, Apple's reliability factor has been dropping, yet prices haven't fallen and the innovation hasn't increased.