dish network customer service

the market-research firm whose surveys some car companies seem inordinately fond of quoting, released its latest findings about television services yesterday. And although the Westlake Village, Calif., company touted its survey results as good news for that industry, that's not necessarily the case for all the companies its data cover.

Across the U.S., J.D. Power ranked customer satisfaction -- based on survey responses from 28,118 households queried in January, March and July of this year -- at an average of 632 points out of 1,000, up 23 from last year's results. (As one point of comparison, home-insurance companies earned an average score of 773 in the other J.D. Power customer-satisfaction study released this week.)

But as you can see from the above chart, taken from the PDF copy of the company's release announcing the news, some TV companies did better than others. Verizon's Fios, for instance, scored 714 in the eastern U.S., while satellite services DirecTV and Dish Network weren't far behind in that area, at 684 and 669. The major cable operators doing business in the Washington area -- Comcast, Cox and RCN -- trailed their competitors at, respectively, at 597, 644 and 602.

J.D. Power's site also provides a graphical breakdown of those scores, including ratings for such qualities as reliability, cost and customer service. Have a look at it and let me know in the comments whether those numbers square with your own experience.