Slashdot Mirror
Dell Laptop Burns House Down
Nuclear Elephant writes "The Consumerist is running a story about a house burned down by a Dell laptop. 'My 130-year-old former farm house was engulfed in flames, with thick dark smoke pouring out of the windows and roof... Hours later, after investigation the fire marshal investigator took me aside asked me if I had a laptop computer. Yes — I told him I had a Dell Inspiron 1200.' It was determined that the laptop, battery, or cord malfunctioned after its owner left for work, leaving the fire to spread through the entire house. All attempts to contact Dell have failed. 'I have tried to call Dell to at least notify them of my problems, but each time I have called I get transferred into an endless loop of "Joe" or "Alan" all speaking a delectable version of English I presume emanates from Bangalore. I have been outright hung up on each time I get someone who speaks a reasonable version of English, or sounds like they might be in charge of something. Promises of call backs have gone, of course, unreturned.'"
Dell's a corporation. They're either a Texas or a Delaware corp. (Probably Texas.) They'll be registered with whatever the local equivalent of the secretary of state's office is. They'll have provided the name and address of a person or agency authorized by them to receive service of process (in the event they're sued or something). Send a certified letter to that person/agency. You'll get someone's attention right quick, without plowing through India.
You might also think about talking to a tort lawyer. From what I got from this article, you've probably got a pretty good consumer products liability claim. (Even if you're not interested in pursuing it, whomever insured your farm house -- it was insured, right? -- is probably interested in recouping their loss. And, enough of these exploding Dells have made the news of late, it might force Dell to be substantially more careful when designing their next round of laptops... But, then, I'm a trial lawyer, that's how I think. :)
Good luck, sorry to hear about your loss!
geek. lawyer.
Contact an attorney. They WILL be able to get ahold of Dell for certain. Not only that, but come back here and post an article on your progress. Get a petition going - Slashdot readers will sign it (online most likely) in droves. Contact PJ at Groklaw, she'll likely be interested in your story. With all of the talk of exploding batteries, you're likely to find an audience that will listen to an attorney.
First and foremost, I am sorry for the loss of your home. The best suggestion I can give you is:
Get a copy of the Fire Marshal's report that specifies the source of the fire being the laptop in question, deliver it to your insurance company, and then go talk to a lawyer.
It sucks, but as an individual, you have less a chance of gaining the attention of the company in question (never mind the /. post) than the lawyer pool of your insurance company will.
Good Luck
You don't need to talk to anybody at Dell or negotiate anything to exchange a defective battery. It's a simple process, just fill in your information at Dell's battery recall site. I hope this helps you out, as I can imagine how difficult it must have been for you to try to call dell once for each one of your four hundred batteries. The funny thing is that I found this site after only a few seconds of googling.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
>You might also think about talking to a tort lawyer.
The parent, being an attorney, may be taking for granted that everyone knows about coordinating with insurance companies.
Read your policy, and look for fine print about attempting to recover damages on your own. You could seriously alienate your insurance carrier if you made a misstep in the legal system that blocked their chance of recovering money using their own lawyers.
Why do you want to talk to Dell?
/. - you should be safe, nobody reads this.
This is why you get a lawyer and let him/her to the leg work... this is going to turn into a legal issue anyway, why screw it up before it starts by giving Dell some words or description of the events that they can use against you.
All it takes is one "maybe" or "possibly" or "it could have been the cat" and your case is gone with your house.
You posted this on
This new incident raises a lot of questions. Power cord? Battery? Origin of battery? Etc.
"Hours later, after investigation the fire Marshall investigator took me aside asked me if I had a laptop computer. Yes -- I told him I had a Dell Inspiron 1200..."
Since when does the fire department conduct an investigation into a fire that determines the source within hours of the fire taking place. Especially with something that would be hard to determine- such as the fire being started by an electronic device that presumably would have been fairly well destroyed if it was as small as a laptop and made of the less than tough plastic and other materials that laptops are made of. The account seems to be fairly short on details to be pointing the finger at Dell. And as others have pointed out- why isn't this guy calling his insurance company instead of Dell? They are the ones who would be paying him for the house.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. -Plato
Fixing someone's computer and/or order is one thing. Using a piece of machinery capable of flinging metal, rocks and glass 500 feet is another. Here in the USA, the government office would have been worried about being sued if that mower kicked a rock up and smashed someone's windshield, causing them to fly off the road at 70mph to a gruesome death. Unauthorized work isn't covered by insurance, and that includes favors.
The "could haves" rule in the world of insurance (refuse to pay) and injury law (awarding damages). For that reason, the guy whose house burned down could convince a jury that he "could have" been asleep in bed with the flu and would have died in the fire. If the laptop is at fault, he could be awarded damages in the millions for a 130 year old tinderbox, unless their lawyer argues he ignored a recall/warning.
And trust me, any 130 year old farmhouse is a tinderbox, especially if it still has heart pine flooring/ceiling joists. Heart pine is from the heart of a very old pine tree, rich with sap that has turned to turpentine (aka paint thinner)... quite flammable.
That's too bad. I bought a Delphi MyFi XM unit 2 years ago. There were battery issues and about 2 weeks after XM announced there would be a recall I received a replacement battery in the mail. I *never* requested it, they just automatically sent it based on their customer records. Granted, the laptop batteries are probably more expensive than my little XM battery but I'm also guessing that Dell has a lot more resources than XM. Even if they didn't send out unprompted batteries to customers, I would think they could at least send letters about the recall. (maybe they did, I don't know)
This is obviously from a person who hasn't had repeated conversations with Dell customer support representatives. I'm one of those lucky individuals who, in the lifetime of his 3 year warranty, has needed them to replace the video card, the cd rom, the screen, the hard drive, and the motherboard. Needless to say, I definitely got my money's worth for the 400+ dollar warranty, and obviously had worse than average luck or the warranty would have cost more.
In any case, I've spent extensive time on the phone with Dell's customer support. Although they may speak excellent Indian English, this isn't even close to American English. They may speak as clearly as royalty, but that doesn't mean that they're comprehensible to Americans. On a couple of occasions, it has been necessary for me to ask the rep to transfer me to someone who had a more American accent, and that helped a bit. Regardless, I can guarantee that their first tier customer service centers were nowhere in the United States.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I don't care who sits next to you or where you or they are. I have had the same experience - over and over - time and time again. I hate having to try and gues what the other person is saying. I speak comprehendible and clearly understandible ENGLISH, not Hindi, Chinese, Swahili, Russian, French, or Martian. Americans don't care if it is actually an 'American' voice- We just care about being able to understand what they are saying and not having to stand over a codebook trying to decipher what they are saying. Unfortunately, we keep getting routed to India (at least in my cases, the only foreign tech support people sounded Indian).
The person was making a point saying that he didn't like having to speak with people who he couldn't understand.
Would YOU want to explain to someone that their product burned down your house because of their product if they couldn't speak a lick of English? I'm not talking King's English here, I just mean and version of English that could be understood without having to guess at what's being said.
Companies should consider it an act of courtesy by the company towards the consumer that the individuals who the consumer will be dealing with can speak English to a degree of conversation that is much higher that the current standard of "Hi Sir, my name is Joe Average." Customers have enough problems-That is why they are calling Tech Support in the first place. Customers also know there is little to no chance of fixing their problem when they can't understand the person on the other end.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The point I was making about Indian call centres has nothing to do with the standard of their English. On the contrary, it would probably be fair to say that, in general, the accuracy of their language (regardless of accent) is at least equivalent to that of the average Slashdotter. I'll leave you to construe what you will from that... :-D
The point I was making was that the scripted responses they are allowed (or equipped) to proffer seem to be specifically designed to achieve nothing other than to provide a buzz-bar between the customer and the company.
The petition on road tax included here is managing to have a rather large impact on the UK government so saying they do *nothing* is a slight exaggeration.
Online petitions are a joke and a waste of time. To date an online petition has never changed anything.
I see you missed Farscape : The peacekeeper wars. ;)
In the UK (not sure if it works the same way in the US, IANAL) recordings are only permitted if you're registered as a data controller under the Data Protection Act. That means people recording calls that they make is generally against the law.
Being registered as a data controller costs money, but it also makes you liable for any breaches with some quite substantial fines under UK law. I would be surprised if there wasn't a similar provision in American law somewhere.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I've dealt with several computer defect issues in the past, and have been on the "front lines" of getting a recall announced. Computer manufacturers will do everything they can to avoid a recall because it costs them a tremendous amount of money and causes a lot of consumers that are not actually experiencing a problem to file for the recall and get an unnecessary replacement. Case in point, I was working on one model of computer and I recognized the now well-known "bulging capacitor" issue, but this was on a machine that was not on the recall list. I contacted the manufacturer and was assured this was a fluke and there was no known issue with these boards. Two weeks later, a recall for that model was announced. They would not have done this only two weeks after finding out about the problem, I'm sure they knew about it months ago and were just now making the decision and getting their parts supply pumped up before making the anouncement.
Consider the cost of paying this guy off or replacing the house, and compare that with the cost of announcing a recall on a $50 part that's in 50,000 units? The house is cheap by comparison. Although if someone dies in the fire, you're likely to lose your shirt.
One thing I have yet to see anyone clarify is who is ending up paying for the majority of the costs associated with this recall? They're sony batteries in dell battery packs. One would assume that dell has a contact with sony that specifies sony will pay at least some of the cost of any necessary recall involving their product.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Hello. This was my house, I am the dan from the article. I contacted Dell because a fire investigator told me it would be a good idea. Also, the case was referred to the Consumer Product Safety comission. I was asked to contact Dell to get the serial numbers and batch numbers or whatever that is from Dell. Since the laptop was ruined it wasn't easy to extract all the fine points of what battery, cord, revision, etc it was. No entertainment involved.
Thanks for clarifying. It changes everything to know you were asking for specific information that Dell should have been able to provide. As the AC said, you should update the Consumerist story so it's clear you weren't just calling to vent.
BTW, your insurance company might be helpful in getting the information, if they don't have it already. If Dell is in some way obligated to give up the information, your insurance company will know how to trigger that obligation. They'll tell you exactly who to call, what to say, and what information to have on hand. (If Dell isn't obligated to give up the information, it's good to know that so you can give up calling and pursue the PR angle.)
Well, what is important to understand here is my intent in notifying Consumerist.
I read that website because it is primarily a website relating to bad experiences with large companies.
My bad experience wasn't related to the fire all that much, but rather, just trying to get to the right department within Dell.
That was the goal of writing to them in the first place. I didn't send this to Slashdot, for example, because overall it's not "news for nerds".
Points: 1. Well my main goal was to get the serial numbers from the laptop, for the investigators. The people involved were incredibly rude, and wouldn't give them to me without a reason. It really wasn't harrasment. After someone asked me why I needed them the endless loops began. 2. Why do I need my insurance companies permission to do anything? 3a. My wiring was in code. I bought the house (relatively) recently, and the wiring was modern, up to date, properly grounded and maintained. 3b. If you saw the scene your skepticism may be abated somewhat. But unless you are a fire expert I think your conclusions are uninformed. The government fire people don't need to prove anything in a court of law unless it goes to a criminal court. The insurance people are taking their time with it. They are doing everything you suggest.