Dell Chastized Over Customer Service

The Register is reporting that Dell recently agreed to give into demands from the UK's Office of Fair Trading and alter the agreements that accompany their hardware. From the article: "The OFT has spent the past few months sparring with Dell over the company's terms and conditions. The two organizations recently agreed to settle their issues with Dell changing contracts and making them "fairer to consumers," the OFT said. The specific changes, however, remain secret as neither the OFT nor Dell will reveal exact terms and conditions alterations and as Dell has kept old contracts online."

Comments

hm...

[joe 155]

how unfair can the agreements be... we get enough statutory rights to make sure that nothing too bad can happen.

Leveling the field

[Beuno]

Finally some stories are kicking in that the balance is being pushed in favour of consumers instead of the other way.
I think corporations should be punished heavily when they try to get away with abusive practices to trim down the ammount of users that get abused and also to be fair to the corporations who really do make an effort in being fair.

Re:Leveling the field

[cortana]

I think corporations should be punished heavily when they try to get away with abusive practices to trim down the ammount of users that get abused and also to be fair to the corporations who really do make an effort in being fair.

???

If you don't like their customer service, don't buy their products. The market will decide whether good customer service is worth the extra cost.

Re:Leveling the field

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"If you don't like their customer service, don't buy their products. The market will decide whether good customer service is worth the extra cost."

Oh yeah, that's working real well right now. Either the problems aren't made public enough or they are the sort of problems that don't bite you until you've handed your money over. Not everybody has the time or the inclination to do hours of research before every product purchase is made. Caveat Emptor? Sure. Okay. That doesn't mean companies should be given free reign to act criminally.

Re:Leveling the field

[RsG]

And when all or most of the competing companies offer equally cruddy customer service? What then? Just "don't buy from any of them", and do without any support at all?

The market isn't some mystical force. It isn't sentient, and it doesn't make decisions, no matter how we sometimes anthropomorphasize it. It's a semi-rational human construct that behaves predictably - and it cannot magically "correct" itself if the circumstances don't allow it.

For market correction to occur spontainiously, there have to be a least two different choices facing a customer, and he has to have access to accurate information about what advantages and drawbacks each choice offers. If either the customer has no source of accurate information before making a purchasing decision, or if he doesn't have two different choices (two identical choices or only one choice are both possible reasons), then the market doesn't correct.

If you're getting bad support, you've already made a purchase, and the company has gotten your cash. You can avoid them in the future, and tell others to do so as well, but it is entirely possible for a company to get by on one time customers alone. You'd have to know that the company had crappy tech support before you bought their product - and where are you going to get that information? Maybe the only people you know who bought from them never used their tech support. Going online doesn't help either - too much whining one the one hand and too much astroturfing on the other.

And if you do know that company X has crappy support, then you still need a company Y to turn to that is better in this regard. If no such alternative exists (or is feasble for your circumstances), then there is nothing you can do.

Free market capitalism is not a panacea. It's better than the alternatives, granted, but it does have drawbacks - and one of those drawbacks is the damage lack of accurate information and choice can do to customers.

Also, the person you replied to said that misbehaving corporations need to be "punished", right? Isn't that exactly what the free market correcting itself is supposed to be about? Ie, people voting with their wallets, and leaving bad companies in favour of better ones.

Re:Leveling the field

[Planesdragon]

Microsoft was persecuted by the EU, which apparently doesn't trust people to choose to associate with businesses on their own, and the fines were wrong.

No, the fines were the EU saying "look, if you want to play in our field you have to obey our laws."

MS is a monopoly -- I think they have a bigger control over the consumer computer market than Standard Oil had in its day. In the USA, that means that they can't leverage their monopoly to enter other market. (Such as, for example, they can't force Windows users to buy Office, or keep them from using a Palm OS PDA, or have a Windows PC crap all over the network in a way that they don't let Apple and IBM/Linux know about).

In the EU, well, the standards are a bit higher. It's much more of a socalist economy than the United States, and that means that there are, as other folk have noted, more rules in favor of consumers against businesses. MS always has the option of just backing out of the EU entirely; I'm sure they'll still survive, somehow, with the loss of 400 million potential customers--and, heck, once Europe becomes dominated by Apple, MS can come back in as a non-monopoly player.

Don't expect MS to pay all of that fine, btw. They'll probably make the concessions that the EU demands, and have a significant part of it lifted or voided. (What DOES the EU want, anyway?)

Re:Leveling the field

[Changa_MC]

The US laws are supposed to be about allowing freedom for everyone, not protecting business, but they are becoming increasingly against businesses. Microsoft was persecuted by the EU, which apparently doesn't trust people to choose to associate with businesses on their own, and the fines were wrong.

You need to substantiate some of this. What specific laws are you thinking of? In my opinion, US laws increasingly support business interests over individual rights, ala DMCA and other restrictive anti-consumer legislation.

While computer geeks and big spenders have options like linux and OS/X, typical consumers have a choice of MS Windows or no computer. That means 90% of the consumer market is locked into using Microsoft, so the EU correctly recognized them as a monopoly. When they illegally leveraged that monopoly to expand their business in other markets, the EU fined them. In what way do you see their attempt to protect free market fair trade as wrong?

Re:Leveling the field

[pnutjam]

I RMA'd the HD on my sister's Dell. It was a really good experience. I've dealt with my share of RMA's and it can really be a pain, but not this time.

I called called from work and explained I didn't have the system in front of me. I explained what I had done to ascertain the drive was the problem. Gave the the smart drive error code and that was it. They sent out a new drive, along with all the CD's for OS and drivers/software (sister lost these).

My experience has been that even when support is decent and you convince them to replace a part CD's must be worth their weight in gold because it is almost impossible to get OS or driver CD's without a huge hassle.
Dell really impressed me.

Wayback machine?

[fabu10u$]

After they change the online copies, of course, won't you be able to diff them with the Wayback Machine?

Another non-story

[dave420]

Nothing important, nothing final, nothing being made public. Pure speculation ensues.

Re:OK...

[bcat24]

Yep, and it's not just a problem with Dell. My parents bought a Toshiba laptop from CompUSA. They also bought the extended warranty. Less than a year afterwards, the power jack broke. Of course, they took it in for service, and were told that it wasn't covered under the warranty. CompUSA wanted to sell them a new motherboard for $700. All this despite the fact that 1) many other people have had problems like this and 2) there are a ton of places selling replacement power jacks for less than $50.