Our tables rating individual firms will be more valuable to you if you know how the data were gathered and how they should be interpreted.

Opinion Surveys

We regularly survey area CHECKBOOK and Consumer Reports subscribers for their feedback on services they have used. For our survey on travel agents, we asked consumers to rate their experiences with firms they had most recently used "inferior," "adequate," or "superior" on several aspects of service, including "doing service properly," "doing service promptly," "letting you know cost early," "advice on options and costs," "pleasantness of staff," and "overall performance." The ratings tables show the percent of each firm's surveyed customers who rated it "superior" (as opposed to "inferior" or "adequate") on each question.

We have included on our ratings tables all of the firms for which we received at least 10 ratings on our customer survey. If a firm is not listed on our ratings tables, it simply means we did not receive at least 10 ratings for it; that fact has no negative or positive implications.

Since many firms were rated by rather small numbers of raters, small differences between two firms in the percentage of raters who gave a particular rating (say, "superior") should be ignored. The table below gives a rough guide to minimum differences you should look for in deciding on one firm over another.

When using these survey data, remember that the questions are to some degree subjective and that the differences among firms might be explained by differences in the personalities, backgrounds, critical standards, and other characteristics of the raters or by biases these raters might have.

Timeliness of the Data

All of the data must be interpreted in view of timeliness. Our customer survey data are from surveys conducted from September 2002 to April 2011. Survey respondents were asked to report on experiences in the preceding year.

Our ratings tables include firms for which we collected 10 or more ratings on our customer survey during the customer survey period mentioned above, but we do not report data for periods prior to firms' changes of name and ownership. As a result, some large firms are not listed at all. If only name or ownership changed, we do report the data. Changes subsequent to the dates listed above may not be taken into account.

Top Ratings

We give checkmarks to firms that score highest on a scoring system that we devise for each service field. Our scoring systems weight the various data in our tables and text based on our subjective judgment of their importance. Since the scores are based entirely on information presented, you can apply your own subjective judgments, and decide whether you prefer firms we have not given checkmarks. Where we do not have important data on a firm, we cannot give our checkmark.