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.'"
So what do you want "Alan" to do about it? Send another replacement parts?
At this point I believe the best thing would be to call a lawyer who has experience handling cases such as this. While this one is possibly a first, I am sure there are a slew of them out there who specialize in suing companies due to damage caused by faulty manufacturing or defective parts.
In the event that this was not faulty manufacturing or parts, for example if the man frayed his cord and left it damaged, then he doesn't have a leg to stand on, otherwise it should be pretty straight forward if it shows it in the report on the fire.
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I know it's not a model listed on the https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/ website, but they do state many batteries were sent out as replacements too. Guess it'll be difficult to read the battery pack serial number now...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Let the insurance company handle it. That is what you pay them for, they don't want to pay the claim themselves and the insurance company has the deep pockets to cover legal fees.
That's nothing, a single mp3 put my whole family in the poorhouse.
I told him I had a Dell Inspiron 1200.
His model isn't on Dell's official list of affected models. So, one wonders, was it the "laptop, battery, or cord" that started the fire? I would imagine that if the cord wasn't severely mangled, and assuming the laptop itself didn't have a very serious manufacturing flaw (that probably would have prevented it from working in the first place), perhaps the transformer was at fault.
Reading the article though, I found it very... unsatisfying. It seems more that the real news is the writer's inability to get any meaningful correspondence with Dell about this particular issue... but then again, that isn't really news.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I used to know a guy who worked for the local council cutting grass. One day he was driving to a job and noticed someone trying to cut a big site full of high grass with a small domestic lawn mower. He stopped, unloaded the slasher, did the job as a favour and was on his way in five minutes.
All was fine until the guy with the mower called the council to publicly thank the employee who had helped him, wherupon all hell broke lose.
So whatever you do don't ring Dell to report this guy for being good. Dell don't want to be good and we should judge the company by its official actions, despite the fact that 99% of the people who work there are nice people who rescue kittens, etc.
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Let's get this one out of the way first: the Inspiron 1200 was not one of the models listed in the recall program.https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/
I would like to know if the battery in the defective unit was one of the batteries subject to recall. If it was, then the owner bears some responsibility.
IANAL (and this is not legal advice, yadda yadda...) but I think that, in order to prove that in court, you'd have to prove that A) the battery was one of the Sony recalled batteries B) The customer could reasonably be expected to have been aware that the battery in his laptop was one of the recalled batteries C) Despite knowing that the battery was dangerous and subject to recall, the customer did nothing to get a replacement
But more than this, the maker of the battery was likely of Sony origin and quality.
Which would only add a co-defendant in the lawsuit, if the guy were to go down that road.
And really, what is Dell supposed to say to claims of "you've burned my house down?"
Excellent point. If someone accused me of that, all I'd say is, "No comment." The next thing I'd say is, "Let's talk confidential settlement. Howzabout I give you a million dollars for your house, without admitting any liability?"
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
It's very unlikely that he has a product liability case here. First, the whole Dell (Sony) battery catching on fire thing is old news. The defective batteries were all shipped from April - July of 2006. Second, Dell has issued a safety recall and anyone who has chosen not to participate is going to have a hard time winning a case. Third, the Inspiron 1200 wasn't one of the affected systems. Fourth, it's astonishing that hours after the fire the have such a detailed explanation of events. "Laptop failed." That kind of forensics process takes a lot longer than a handful of hours. While anyone's home burning down is unfortunate, putting the blame on Dell sounds very opportunistic. It'd be interesting to see where this guy stood on his mortgage payments....
Presumably you have insurance? If so, this little stunt could cost you your claim...
Insurance policies have a clause in it re: subrogation. E.g. If Dell is really at fault--the insurance company will pay you directly, and then go after Dell for the money..
BUT your policy also has a clause in it saying that you must not do anything to obstruct the insurance company's ability to subrogate. This little slashdot stunt and posting your story online may just do that.. You may have fscked yourself twice over.
Summary for easy understanding: Dell did not do enough to tell its consumers about the battery recall.
This may have happened, but the whole thing sounds like a load of crap. It's the sort of thing that usually arrives in my email inbox with "FWD" appended to it.
Seriously, has this been sourced?
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
I'll take the odds that the sofa was the most flammable piece of furniture in his house. We do this all the time, but still...we should know better. I would probably also be asking whether there were functioning smoke detectors or a more sophisticated alarm system in place. Something very basic, but, again, too easily forgotten.
When you write "Good luck, sorry to hear about your loss!", to whom exactly are you saying that? The person who posted this Slashdot article isn't the same as the person who submitted content to the blog that Slashdot links to. You're talking to a wall, in other words, and odds are pretty high that the consumerist poster will never read these comments.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but people often do find out when stories about their life make it onto Slashdot, it being a fairly well-known site. Your helpful information is just arrogant nitpicking.
Online petitions are a joke and a waste of time. To date an online petition has never changed anything. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.ht m
I'm sure it will work great. :\
Bah, this has nothing to do with looking out for his interests and getting fair compensation for his loss. His homeowner's insurance company is already handling it, and if he wants to recover damages not covered by his insurance, he knows the next step is to call a lawyer, not Dell.
So, if he knows this (and I think it's safe to assume he does), why is he calling Dell? A house burning down is not like a hard drive dying. Calling them on and the phone and expecting to have a casual chat about a matter relating to insurance claims and possible legal action is asinine and simply obnoxious. "Notify" them? Gimme a break. No wonder they hung up on him. It's the only safe thing to do when a guy calls you repeatedly and fishes for comments about an issue that may be discussed in court.
I'm sure the guy is taking appropriate steps to protect his interests. This stuff about calling Dell is nothing but entertainment; it's completely irrelevant to resolving the matter, and he knows it. He's just wasting their time and trying to embarrass them.
First, STFU in public about what happened. Not online, definitely not to the news media. Anything you say, especially if you speculate as to the cause, could come back to haunt you if this ever goes to trial.
Repeat "no comment" to yourself aloud a few hundred times to get used to it.
Next, call your insurance company. Let them sort it out. Let their lawyers fight it out with Dell if the laptop is determined to be the cause.
We don't let lawyers write code, by the same token, you shouldn't try to handle this with Dell yourself. You shouldn't be contacting them at all.
What will the petition be about exactly? A petition to make it so that you don't have to talk to the particular branch of tech support for the type of warranty you paid for? You get routed somewhere different depending on whether you're a business or consumer. Some people get to talk to Americans, some get to talk to Canadians. You are not supposed to be helped by someone other than your division because it gets charged out of the wrong place and screws up budgeting and whatever. This guy didn't want to talk to someone with an Indian accent (I can guess why he got hung up on), well fuck him. I work for Dell Canada. It really pisses me off when a caller makes a point of expressing relief to hear an "American" voice "at last". It pisses me off more when some of the people they are complaining about happen to work right next to me. Yes, this is Canada, where we have a whole bunch of different people and don't freak out trying to talk to any of them that don't sound like us. I have no sympathy for this guy.
Without actually seeing the scene, it's hard to presume the laptop would be destroyed. Consider the possibility that it sparked for a few seconds, lighting curtains or polyurethane. The flames may have traveled up and left the laptop alone where it was buried under just enough debris to shield it a little, and it was identifiable within a few minutes as "probably a laptop." Fire marshals are trained to ID the source of a fire and I imagine they can narrow it down to a 10-foot area within an hour if the conditions are right. Again, without knowing the scene or seeing an actual report, it's impossible to say.
... "
And as for calling Dell, he did call his insurance company first.
"Since the incident my homeowners company has been very interested in
the information about the laptop. I have tried to call Dell to at
least notify them of my problems,
Still, bad strategy. Never call a company to inform them of a pending claim/lawsuit; let the lawyers do that. One wrong word can kill a case.
Got your money's worth for the $400 warranty?
Sounds more like you got screwed on the original purchase.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
The parent post is an utter and malicious lie.
I have recordings (yes, you're not supposed to do that) of several Dell support calls my wife made in which their English was terrible, their accents were quite heavy, and they stayed with scripts and did not in any way show innovation or creative thought in their attempts to fix her broken machine.
And that felgercarb about East Indians speaking better English than American call centers is pure racist bollocks. I manage a data center and we outsource rurally to a place in Oklahoma City, OK, and their English is light years superior. I ensure this, but really, I don't have to. We have people in Manhattan, some of whom come right over from Spanish Harlem, who speak better English.
Let's not get into the tech support skills.
As for attitude and rudeness, now neither side of the ocean can claim the high ground there. I've never ordered a rurally outsourced rep terminated for crappy English, but the owner of the company decided to end our Bangalore (company not spoken here) call center contract because of their unimaginative, scripted behavior, and we've fired a healthy number of Americans for being rude.
But for you to say American reps - techies, no less - have poorer English skills than East Indian reps - is horribly wrong and very, very racist.
It's like East Indian workers can do no wrong and we can do no right. Well, excuse me, but I'll vote with my money. And if the other 300 million Americans did the same, there would be no booming East India or China economy.
You globalists depend on America's money. Otherwise you wouldn't sell so much to us. At least show us some respect .
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Why is he calling Dell? Because isurance can't replace a 130 year old farm house. That's why. The guy is pissed.
Don't the people that answer the phone have away to escelate something like this? They can't refer them to their legal department? How the fuck hard is it? Dell should have a intranet to at least look up the freaking phone # to the proper department. Its not that thard to tell. Or you don't think so? Granted I don't know exactly how everything went down but the company should have been able to route the calls to the right department.
It sounds like he got escalated multiple times. But what could they do for him? Any company will route you to someone who will take down a complaint. ("I'd like to make a complaint" has never failed for me.) But that's not what he wanted to do. Any company will route you to the legal department if you have something legal to say... but he didn't. He didn't want to initiate any official process, because he's quite sensibly going to leave that to his insurance company and possibly his lawyer, if it comes to that.
In fact, he says he only wanted to "notify" them of his "problems," which he was surely able to do. It only takes thirty seconds to tell the story, so he probably "notified" half the people he talked to. There's no explanation of why he kept calling, who he was trying to reach, or what kind of satisfaction he wanted from them.
So what should Dell have done? Transfer him to the legal department -- no, he wasn't calling with any legal business. (He was probably offered the option anyway.) Let him tell his tale to a non-lawyer -- fine, he did. Have a non-lawyer discuss or even acknowledge what he said -- no way in hell.
That's the point. There was no right department because there was nothing they could do for him. He can't even clearly say what it was he wanted. That's a pretty good way to get transferred around aimlessly and hung up on, especially if you get escalated to busy people who can tell you have no clear aim in calling.
Another good way to get hung up on is to badger people about something they've told you they can't discuss. Suppose you were in a car accident and the other guy kept calling you and asking to talk about his medical problems. Wouldn't you start hanging up on him?
I'm listing reasons why Dell has a lot on it's side, not a logical chain of conditionals.
The argument would be that Dell doesn't have an endemic problem with fiery batteries in the Inspiron 1200 line. As such they would be unlikely to have a responsibility, as the cause of the fire could be the condition of the equipment. However, if this gentleman had personal experience with his particular laptop involving undue heat, and that there is a recall going on, he should have gotten involved. The article doesn't indicate that he did.
The assertion that a laptop can cause a house-fire affects more than just the ex-homeowner. It affects everyone, and it demand a PR response, and a rationale warning to consumers. Do not leave Dell laptops running unsupervised - comes to mind.
I think the author is trying to raise public awareness about a devastating loss which could potentially affect each of us.
Bear in mind - the probability of that risk is irrelevant. The probability of a terrorist death in your family is much smaller than the risk of a fatal car accident, but the President has made his a single-issue presidency by selling the fear uncertainty and doubt caused by (certain) dark-skinned people to white Anglo-Saxon protestants (which never weary of that sort of thing).
This author is selling us a much more rationale risk with Dell as the responsible party. Dell will have to deal with this, and their failure to provide a PR person to the caller, means they now owe all of us an explanation.
AIK
That's nice, when my 5.1 speakers were making popping and cracking sounds even when not plugged in, it took a 15 minute call to dell and I had a replacement set couriered out with shipping paid both ways. Made me feel better about not paying premium prices.
Not giving a straight answer.
In most cases, a customer would prefer to have a straight answer that they do not like over a run around and the possibility of compensation dangled in their face forever. Certainly they'd most like to get compensated when they think they should be, but if it comes down to it, what they want most is a straight answer as to what will be done about their case.
I've seen it where I work and from companies I've called... reps are scared shitless of giving an answer the customer won't like, so they pussyfoot around it. Screw that noise. It's demeaning to the rep to have to do that, and in almost every case it only pisses the customer off even more. It is quite possible to deliver bad news in a way that is both polite and direct. They are screwed anyways, no need to make it worse by giving them a huge runaround.
Never accept a 'no' from someone who doesn't actually have the authority to say 'yes'