IanStewart wrote:
NinetyFour wrote:
Two years ago Chapter Internet, the only internet provider in the country to offer high-speed internet access, handily won the Worst Business of the Year award, earning three times as many votes as the company that came in second. Last year Chapter made technological improvements which doubled the average speed of its customers’ internet service. However, the company did nothing to address its poor customer service, which explains why Chapter won the Worst Business of the Year award again last year.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
B) The quality of a company’s customer service affects some of the voters for the Worst Business of the Year award.
E) Voters for the Worst Business of the Year award are not influenced by previous years’ results.
As the question is written, there's no way the answer can be B. We know as a premise that Chapter has "poor customer service". We do not know as a premise why Chapter 'won' the Worst Business award in either year. It's possible that Chapter has regular service outages, say, and that explains their two Worst Business wins. But that's not even the easiest basis on which to rule out B. We have no idea who votes on this award. For all we know, some independent panel of voters in a different country evaluates all of these businesses, looking at customer reviews and company reports or whatever else, and decides who 'wins'. It's possible none of the voters even use this internet service, let alone that the customer service "affects some of the voters".
If answer B was rephrased so it wasn't so awkwardly worded -- if it said simply that customer service was relevant to some of the voters, rather than that the voters were 'affected' by the customer service -- then it at least becomes a better choice. But there remains the possibility of a third explanation, besides customer service and internet speed, for the award (service outages, say). The only answer I can justify here is E; if the argument is claiming Chapter's failure to improve its customer service led to the second award, the argument is assuming there isn't another explanation for the second award. Answer E rules out one alternate explanation, so it is an assumption, or at least it's the closest thing to an assumption that we find among the choices.
I read 'affects voters' not to mean 'these voters suffered poor customer service at the behest of this service,' but 'affects [the vote of] voters.'
I don't think 'affects voters' must mean 'these voters PERSONALLY SUFFERED the bad customer service,' I think it just means, 'these voters are AWARE OF the poor customer service, this AFFECTS how they vote.'
Like if I vote against a politician because they want to put in prison some marginalized group, that would AFFECT me even if I wasn't in the marginalized group that was to be imprisoned. That policy AFFECTED voters to vote against that politician.
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27 Jan 2023, 08:31
