Chances are, you like your doctor a lot more than you like your computer tech-support person. That's one of the conclusions from our examination of surveys conducted during the past three years by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, which has been surveying readers about services since 1976, garnering millions of responses. Other observations:

Scores for most services have been consistent over the years, although computer-help Ratings declined sharply between 2001 and 2002 (about the time tech-support staffs were trimmed and computer security became more of an issue), and Ratings of chain restaurants rose slightly (possibly because more upscale chains have opened in recent years).

In our Ratings (available to subscribers), reader satisfaction scores represent the averages from all respondents. A score of 100 would mean that all respondents were completely satisfied; 80 would mean all were very satisfied on average; 60, fairly well satisfied; 40, somewhat dissatisfied.