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.'"
That's nothing... An iPod killed my family!
And we thought the exploding batteries were bad..
Burning Down the House may have been a poor choice for a new a theme song.
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.
So what do you want "Alan" to do about it? Send another replacement parts?
This is the new combined security and power-save model in Vista. Your PC can't get infected by spyware, no one can hack your home network, and you won't use any power, if the computer just burns the whole place to the ground.
I think it's in the Screen Saver settings someplace:
"[x] Enter Burn-House-to-Ground mode after [ 30 ] minutes of inactivity."
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I had some problems with getting Dell to complete my order (some recovery CDs were missing). I posted about it on Slashdot a few months back and got a reply from a US Dell employeee telling me to drop him a line and he'd help fix it (I'm in the UK) and try to his word after a couple of phone calls everything was sorted out and dandy.
So before everyone starts ragging on Dell, remember there are at least a couple of good apples there.
I like muppets.
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.
YouStockIt - Education through Unorthodox Methods
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.
"Well, this is your problem right here -- this thing's set to EVIL!"
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
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.
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
Is this the first Slashdot IAAL post?
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.
"Dude, you're getting a fire extinguisher!"
I imagine this has happened many times before. It can just be hard to narrow down the cause to a single source.
5 years ago, 6 out of 100 of our new 17" Dell monitors went up in flames, over the first 3 months. This was fortunately an office building with very high ceilings, so there was little risk. I've long imagined just how bad that could have been in a private home, with a low ceiling, and wall nearby. That experience alone stopped me from ever buying anything from Dell.
All the articles on Notebook fires are very old news. Dell's been having fire problem with their entire product range for about the past 10 years. Passing it off as Sony's fault ignores Dell's long history of similar ocurances with all of their machines.
Since it happened to me, I've been wonder when I'd hear about a class action against Dell, but it's never been forthcoming. I guess residential building fires can cover up the evidence pretty well. Sooner or later, it's going to have to come out.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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
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.
This new incident raises a lot of questions. Power cord? Battery? Origin of battery? Etc.
His computer isn't on the list of computers with affected batteries.
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.
I wonder if this is a hoax. The Portland News site does not say anything about the cause of the fire. It does not even name the owner of the house. All we have is some guy named Dan (no last name) writing a letter to a blog claiming a Dell laptop burned down his house. Has anyone bothered to check the facts?
Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of laptop batteries in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
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.
He obviously forgot to install a "firewall".
... Ok, I'm leaving.
"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
Please refrain from impugning our client regarding this incident, or we will be forced to take action against you.
Sincerely,
The Law Offices of Fluffy, Lightning, and Mr Jingles
I'm Canadian, but I got to school in India. Almost everyone I meet speaks amazing English, with just a little bit of an accent. These are all people who are from Bombay or Bangalore, never left the country before (at least to go as far as North America) and havde really good technical skills. Yet instead of picking the well-educated, English-speaking middle class, these call centres instead hire slum dwellers and give them names like "Frank", and attempt to teach them how to speak like us. This training costs a lot, and is really unproductive. If they made an attempt to seek out my classmates, they'd have to pay them more, but they'd have to invest practically no time in "educating" them- they'd save money and produce a better product! GAHHHHHH!!! It's so simple, people!!!
I purchased a Dell XPS 1210 in Australia in November last year, with 3 Years (CompleteCover Guard) Theft insurance. I was typing on the laptop while sitting down at a local restaurant at a fancy part of town, when two big guys came running past the table and grabbed the laptop from behind.
I chased the thieves two blocks before they were able to give me the slip. The whole thing was on security camera (in daylight), and the police informed me that they had a clear picture of the entire incident.
When I reported the incident to Dell, they replied to me the next day via e-mail and said that my claim was rejected because there was no sign of force to the premises. I was stunned, and so went to read the policy. Yes, it said that "Theft of attempted theft not accompanied by forcible and violent entry" was excluded. I then noticed that the policy on the Dell website was somewhat different to the policy provided to me via hardcopy, but they both had a similar clause.
Finally, I decided that if they wanted to get technical, I'd do the same. After carefully reading *both* policies, I noticed that they both had wording similar to "CompleteCover Service is only available with the purchase of a Dell Latitude or Inspiron portable computer, or Dimension or Optiplex or Precision desktop computer, or Axim PDA (The "Product") but is not necessary that you purchase CompleteCover Service to buy a Product from us."
So what did I purchase? Obviously they had no document explaining exclusions for my XPS, since it appears they didn't have a valid policy!
At one point, I was verbally informed that XPS was a Latitude. When I captured many screenshots of the website as evidence against this, Dell denied that this was ever stated.
There were a few other arguable points I could have made, but in the end Dell just wouldn't listen. I only ever spoke to call centers in Asia where the accent was so thick it was hard to understand. I had one e-mail admit there might be a problem with the policy and they will try to fix it in the near future, and many apologies, but every e-mail always quoted "There was no theft of attempted theft not accompanied by forcible and violent entry". E-mails were sometimes hard to read due to invalid sentence structure.
I have been advised not to try and fight this. I am quite broke (my wife is out of work, I am on a small income and only just paid the stolen laptop off), and feel powerless to do anything. I feel the best I can do is encourage people not to purchase anything from Dell. It sure seems like I'm not the only one with a bad experience.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
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.
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)
An iPød bit my sister! :]
No big deal, they'll just use "We Didn't Start the Fire" instead.
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!
I'm really sorry for this chap's loss and, of course, there is no excuse for this kind of catastrophic and dangerous failure. However, if people need another reason to actually switch off their electronic equipment instead of putting it in sleep mode, this seems to be more compelling than what are, to many people, abstract notions of social responsibility (i.e. not wasting cumulatively vast amounts of electricity for the sake of a little convenience).
It used to be the case, with old mainframes that used large tape or disk drives, that it would be more energy efficient to leave them on all the time as the start up phase used up so much energy. This simply isn't the case any more.
When you've finished with your gadgets, switch the buggers off, It's not hard to do.
Tim.
It would be quite easy. IIRC, the UK website allowed you to just enter the service tag of your laptop - they could tell from that what serial number battery it had been shipped with, and whether or not it was affected.
They also know who was shipped what laptops, as if you check the invoice for any recent Dell purchase you'll see it lists the service tags of the items you bought.
It therefore follows that Dell could quite easily figure out the addresses of everyone who was shipped faulty batteries and write to them. Yet they didn't.
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.