Through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and the opening of CES the inside track survey was available to dealers to download, complete and return. Not an ideal timeframe, but by the deadline we still had received a total of 198 returns. Many dealers graded what appears to be pretty much ALL of their vendor partners, which may make up for the approx. 10% shortfall in number of returns. I want to thank all of the participants for somehow finding the time to devote to this time-consuming task. The survey form has now been removed from this website. A few dealers indicated that they have started working on their form and still want to submit it, and those I will still accept through the remainder of the week.

We will now do our best to tally the results, create the graphs and tables and start reporting the results to subscribers and participants as soon as possible. On this website, we will announce the Overall winners in each of the 8 groups (Home Audio/Electronics Companies, Home Audio Speaker Companies, Home Video/Display Companies, HV/Screen Companies, 2 Custom Installation Groups, Wire & Cable Companies and Car Audio Companies). So do check back here.

Sincerely,

Gisela Schoell, Editor

Last updated on January 19, 2012
INSIDE TRACK SURVEY POLICIES

To safeguard the high standards of this survey, please abide by the following longstanding policies:

(1) For your grades to be valid, you must grade a vendor on at least 8/16 parameters. Grading on fewer parameters will disallow your entire string of grades, because it suggests that you are not familiar enough with a particular vendor to be able to grade him.

(2) Strings of "0" across the board are automatically disallowed, since this is not a rational response (even the worst vendor isn't that bad!)

(3) Grading only a single vendor is disallowed, since this amounts to "stuffing the ballot box," especially if the grades are super high.

(4) Please consider all grades you award carefully. While strings of 4.5's for any one vendor are not automatically disallowed, they are very much discouraged. I don't know of a single vendor whose performance across all 16 parameters is so super-excellent, it would warrant 4.5's for each and every one of them.

Vendors Listed in the 2012 Survey
The 27th annual inside track Supplier Loyalty survey
Vendors in the 2012 Survey Results