An award you mostly hear about because the winner paid to license it.
What it's really for A survey-research firm; the awards you hear about are mostly ones the winner paid to license.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its customer-satisfaction surveys and 'highest-ranked' awards, not everything the site does.
High Scoring Confidence Checked against primary sources. We are confident in the facts and the grade here.
The automakers and other brands J.D. Power ranks highest are precisely the ones who pay it most — only the highest-ranked winners are permitted to license the award for advertising (reportedly ~$100,000+ in fees), and those same companies separately buy the underlying survey data and consulting to improve their scores; placement itself is not sold, but the firm's largest revenue flows to and from the parties it rates well.
Source →- Operating since
- 1968 (58 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- It sells syndicated study data, benchmarking reports, and consulting to corporate clients (e.g., automakers, insurers, banks), and charges winning brands a licensing fee — reportedly six figures — to use J.D. Power awards and rankings in advertising.
- What they do
- It runs large-scale surveys of verified customers to rate brands on satisfaction and quality, then issues rankings and "highest-ranked" awards across industries like autos, insurance, banking, and telecom.
- What to watch for
- The awards are self-reported satisfaction surveys, not hands-on product testing, and only the top-ranked brands in narrowly pre-defined segments may pay to advertise the logo — so an award tells you a brand polled well in one slice, not that it is broadly the best or more reliable long-term.
- Composite score
- 2.60 / 5.00 → grade C+
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- J.D. Power was established in 1968 by James David Power III, working at first from his kitchen table; the awards program was established in 1986 and more than 1,000 J.D. Power awards are licensed yearly. Ownership passed from Power to McGraw Hill Financial (2005), to XIO Group (2016, $1.1 billion), and to private-equity firm Thoma Bravo (2019). 'The firm does not earn money on its product rankings, although using the logo and referring to results in advertising requires paying a licensing fee.' Source: Wikipedia: J.D. Power →
- Per J.D. Power's own Awards FAQ: 'The research behind J.D. Power Awards is self-funded and independently conducted, and ranked brands do not pay to participate'; only brands that rank highest and meet award criteria 'have the opportunity to promote their award publicly through the J.D. Power licensing program' and may purchase trophies. Awards are 'based on feedback from verified customers with actual experience using the product or service.' Source: J.D. Power Awards FAQ (via search index) →
- Consumer Reports reports that J.D. Power 'charges companies significant fees for access to survey results and additional fees to advertise their awards' and 'also offer[s] a separate consulting service to help manufacturers improve ratings,' with companies paying 'hundreds of thousands of dollars' — a potential conflict since the same firm rates vehicles and profits from helping them improve scores. A J.D. Power executive conceded 'if they felt that you could buy a better score, then the score would become worthless.' Source: Consumer Reports / Consumerist →