Results of the 2005 annual Online Customer Respect Study of the 100 largest companies in the United States were just released by the Customer Respect Group. These and other companies should take note, as only 6% were rated as excellent. Twenty-nine companies earned a good rating, yet the remaining 65 did not meet standards expected by online customers.

The top ten rated companies, from 1st to 10th are Hewlett-Packard, Medco Health Solutions, Sprint, Intel, American Express, UPS, Bank of America, Microsoft, Dell and Wachovia.

The bottom ten rated companies from 91st to 100th are Wellpoint Health Networks, Johnson Controls, Marathon Oil, Plains All American Pipeline, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Weyerhauser, Honeywell, Morgan Stanley and Berkshire Hathaway.

Major differences appeared between the top third and bottom third companies when it comes to privacy. For example, 30% of the companies are unclear or share customer information with business partners without permission, while 39% do not share such data or only do so with express permission.

Customer control of personal data is another area where there are divergent approaches among companies. For instance, while 29% allow customers to choose (opt-in) to be part of ongoing corporate marketing efforts, an almost as large 24% fail to provide customers with obvious means to remove themselves from online mailing lists (opt-out).

In addition to the foregoing, 28% of the companies were rated as very poor in their handling of online inquires. A full 34% of companies do not respond consistently or at all to online inquiries. In fact, 15% of all online inquires are ignored.

If the largest companies in the United States, presumably with the greatest resources at their disposal, are not doing a stellar job in gaining customer respect, one can only suspect that customer experience with smaller companies, at least in certain instances, may be of even lesser quality.

Eric Sinrod is a partner in the San Francisco office of Duane Morris (www.duanemorris.com), where he focuses on litigation matters of various types, including information technology disputes. His column appears Wednesdays at USATODAY.com. His Web site is www.sinrodlaw.com, and he can be reached at . To receive a weekly e-mail link to Mr. Sinrod's columns, please send an e-mail with the word Subscribe in the Subject line to .

Reprinted here with permission from USAToday.com.