Consumer Reports pulled its recommended rating for Microsoft’s Surface hardware products last week, citing reliability issues. Microsoft disagrees with the downgrade and is reportedly readying a marketing push to present its side of the story to the customers. According to a new report, an internal Microsoft memo has been leaked which shows that the company initially saw high return rates for the Surface Book.
According to the report on Thurrott.com, the internal memo details Microsoft’s response to Consumer Reports. The memo shows that the high return rates for the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book probably impact Consumer Reports’ findings.
Consumer Reports had surveyed more than 90,000 Surface tablet and laptop owners and found that almost 25 percent of Surface users faced issues by the end of their second year of ownership.
The chart included in that memo shows that return rates for the Microsoft Surface Book were as high as 17 percent during its launch period. They remained over 10 percent for six months after launch. Surface Pro 4 return rates reached as high as 16 percent during launch and later came down to 11 percent. They have remained around 6 percent throughout the product’s lifetime.
Microsoft has been selling the Surface Book for nearly two years now. Throughout the entire time that it has been available, the Surface Book has seen higher return rates than any other product in the Surface lineup.
Microsoft also mentions in the memo that all of the issues that might have caused higher returns have been fixed and thus returns have decreased over the past 12 months.
The company is planning to share “a comprehensive set of data that reflects the strength of our quality and our customer sentiment” with marketing teams and retail/sales personnel to get the word out.
Filed in . Read more about Microsoft and Surface Book.