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Dell Found Guilty of Fraud, False Advertising
Last year, the Attorney General of New York instigated a lawsuit against Dell for practices like long hold times, repeated call transfers, and disconnects for customers waiting for phone support — all of which make it harder to cash in on promises of (and paid-for) technical support." Now, raptor78 writes "IDG News reports on New York Attorney General's victory over the poor services and deceptive practices employed by Dell over the past years with regards to technical support and promotional offers. It is about time someone spoke up and realized some of the horrors people deal with at Dell." Another reader points to a quick report from Fortune magazine on the ruling.
Provide the damn support. Make it simple, easy to use and easy to understand. Support's the sort of thing that makes you customers for life or loses customers for life. Giving them long hold times, poor service, or even someone with an accent will taint their experience with that product forever. Whenever someone comments on the computer, the owner will tell the story of the bad service. When they go to buy their next computer, they'll buy anywhere else unless there's a very compelling reason to stick with Dell.
p.s. the accent comment also means any strong accent, even southern or north eastern ones. Strong accents are, however, easier to find outside of the country.
That, unfortunately, is becoming the norm with MegaCorps. Verizon is the same way [lets get them next].
You know all those people following the Verizon guy around - "The Network"? I think I get transferred to every one of them just to get a bill straightened out or a service changed. If you want to add a phone line, they'll get you one that afternoon, but forget about anything looking like good service.
The Verizon Techs themselves are great, by the way.
Most of the stuff on
You also have the "higher-class" business line in the Latitude and not the "lower-class" lines such as the Inspiron or the Vostro. My experience has shown that just this small difference in PC selection can make a huge difference in quality of service.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
They deserve a kicking in the courts, it took me 3months for them to repair my laptop properly - it went back 3 times and came back still broken 3 times and took 6 months to resolve the issue once and for all. The issue was a knackered graphics card, display corruption as soon as you boot up even on an external device although after they "fixed" it the second time it came back with the same corruption and after 5mins died completely and failed to boot at all at which point their tech support before offering to repair it properly ran me through a series of diagnostics and intelligent questions like "What is the error message". Quite what error message he was expecting from a laptop which I quite clearly explained initially had display corruption (although explaining "display corruption" to someone who doesn't natively speak English in a call centre is hard enough and shouldn't be something I have to do) preventing viewing of any error if there was one to start with followed by not even powering on at all by the time I called them I've no idea, but then, that's Dell.
In the end they decided to just replace it, told me to send the old one back when the new one was delivered but the courier guy said he only had a drop off.
I phoned Dell 3 times over the next 6 months to collect it and they told me the courier would be there on certain days yet never arrived yet I've never once had a courier let me down here despite using them like once or twice a week for the last 8 years so it was blatantly them not organising it.
After that period Dell decided to threaten me for not letting them have the laptop back by charging my card used for the original purchase 2 years prior for the new laptop despite me making every attempt to get it back to them and them not actually being arsed to properly arrange to collect it. When it came to it cost me a sizeable amount of cash in phone bills, hours on the phone trying to sort it out,
Worst company EVER. It's just a shame they didn't get a harder kicking than this. They used to be awesome, now I wouldn't touch them ever again no matter how able they are to improve because I went in to their service buying the laptop when they were still half-decent and watch them devolve into sheer incompetence and worthlessness over the next few years at which point as unfortunately needed their assistance as above.
Other practices I've noticed they used not mentioned here in the UK is they advertise really good offers on some hardware but when you phone up to purchase it when it's a phone only offer they say the offer doesn't really exist and try and sell you it for up to £100 more, I spoke to trading standards and they said they can do this as long as they sell at least some laptops for the offer price, even if that's only to 2 people in a population of 60 million despite blatantly infering that the offer is open to everyone until the end of the offer data.
All that said, I'm not sure there's really a better option out there for things like laptops either - all the major tech companies seem just as bad.
I'm willing to bet that average end users get a much different experience then corporate customers, but I can provide my experience as a corporate customer.
The small business at which I work purchases Dells in low volume, and has a few smaller Dell servers (really, glorified NAS units). Their support for our company has been exceptional. Just troll through my posts to see that I am absolutely not a Dell shill - I dislike Windows, I dislike Dell supplied crapware, I think their systems are ugly, and I would never personally purchase a Dell. However, all those things aside, corporate and server support is truly excellent at Dell. When I have problems (which is comparatively rare), I get personally attention, overnight shipping of replacements, people who speak flawless English, and courteous follow-ups after the problem has presumably been solved.
One might claim that, by supporting their small-business clients well, it makes their poor consumer support all the more inexcusable - I won't argue that point one way or the other. All I can say that is that there are support sub-infrastructures at Dell that are excellent.
So, you are saying that corporations that commit crimes, up to and including murder, should get away with a slap on the wrist because government is what? Worse than murder?
Why present a false dichotomy? Are you so intellectually bankrupt and slavishly devoted to your dogma of greed-driven, unrestricted capitalism that you can't think up any possible alternatives?
Or maybe you just think the status quo is just peachy?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The way I see it, support quality could vary from region to region. If you want support, try calling the support number before you decide who to buy from. If they don't answer, go figure :).
:).
My aunt bought an Inspiron in Malaysia, to use in NZ where she lives, and I told her to go for the "Complete Cover" thing. Sure Dell's "Complete Cover" _might_ be overpriced etc etc, but I figured it would be less hassle than getting the notebook insured, successfully getting a claim and getting whatever problem fixed. And I suspect Dell Support listens a bit better to their more profitable customers.
Soon after she bought it, she accidentally spilt stuff on it. Dell got it fixed without hassle.
She didn't even call me
Also, whatever happens to the corps, the board members get to eat the penalties (e.g. Enron's board members being held criminally liable in proportion to involvement, etc).
I rather like the idea of the Corporate Death Penalty... sell off|dissolve|split the creature, and hold each individual board member civilly and/or criminally liable. If a CEO knows that no golden parachute will save his ass from being forcibly separated from his personal possessions and money, maybe he'll think a little before deciding to perpetrate fraud, monopolistic predations, and etc.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Pack it in schill. I had 5 servers with bad RAID cards a few years back (PERC 3 cards) and they managed to utterly corrupt the raid in almost every case, to the point where it could not be rebuilt but only restored from backup. It's only almost because I refused to let the guy touch it the last time, and, magically, that time it recovered normally.
I've had printer techs who couldn't take a printer apart. I've had server technicians who couldn't handle basic terminology. I had hours and hours of sitting on the phone with optiplex capacitor problems trying to convince them to just fricking replace the motherboard like they claimed they were doing on their website. This is fricking GOLD corporate support here! I'm glad they got nailed, they richly deserved it.
Just as a footnote, we switched to HP about 18 months ago, and I have no idea what their customer service is like because we haven't had to call it yet.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Unfortunately (or not) I am removing Outlook 2007 right now and can't get to the email. But if you have an account with Dell, you can now pass their tech certification course and skip their tech support all together. From what I remember you can troubleshoot the computer and order the replacement part yourself. Couple hours later, it arrives and you replace it yourself. No tech support, no stupid on-site tech. I have signed up to take the test, but didn't get much further than that...
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
I worked as a phone tech support guy for Dell, and I'm of two minds about this.
On the one hand, at no point was I ever encouraged to give less than anything but the highest quality service. There was no "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" about getting customers off the phone without really helping them, no prodding - subtle or otherwise - to cut corners. We were required to stay on a call for as long as it took to get it right, even though call times were of course monitored.
However, they treated us like crap. Although Dell had put a fair amount of time into training the techs, we were treated like service employees rather than technical professionals, and there were never enough people. Trust me, when you, as a customer, were sitting on hold for hours at a time, it wasn't because the call center folks were goofing off or whatever. It's because we were backed up like you wouldn't believe, because Dell was too cheap to hire enough technicians.
I worked for Dell tech support, and I've had three friends who did as well. There was/is absolutely no conspiracy to deny customers their service - on an individual-call level, Dell demands high quality performance from its techs. However, there was/is systemic disregard for the techs, their expertise, and their workloads, which led to, naturally, a shortage of highly qualified individuals (meaning that in many cases, Dell could only hire marginally qualified people, like myself), which exacerbated hold times as well as lowered the quality of service once the customer got a technician to talk to. There were also some glitches in the system as far as how transfers between departments were handled.
Customers never *intentionally* received the short shrift at Dell. We were all working as hard as we could. But poor employment practices often undercut customer service.
I've dealt with Dell both as a home user (my wife's old laptop, now she uses a Mac) and as a corporate customer. There is a world of difference between the two. Their special line for big-money users is really worlds different from their oft-complained-about home user's customer support
When I represented the big contract, I gave the first guy I talked to an ID number, then was transferred to a friendly support representative. I explained my problem (four failed hard drives--in one month, no less, out of 36 computers) and was off the phone within fifteen minutes with replacement drives arriving a few days later.
As a home user, I had quite the opposite experience. A ball bearing broke on the laptop's under-warranty case fan, so I called tech support. I first had to speak with at least three different people with varying degrees of English comprehension and was told more than once to reboot the computer in order to fix the broken fan. Finally, they agreed to send someone to replace the fan in about a week or so.
But that wasn't the end of it! The technician improperly replaced the keyboard/mouse connectors when he sealed up the computer, meaning that the input devices were completely inoperable (and fixing it myself would involve breaking a security sticker added by the technician and voiding the warranty). I again called Dell's support line, and, after being tossed about from call center to call center--and pretending to reboot a few more times, was finally told that someone could come by to fix the first technician's mistake... in another two weeks.
I fixed it myself in about five minutes after that phone call, considering the lost warranty to be of negligible value at this point.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
...that the sharp pencils at Dell probably figured out that the savings they made on sleazy behavior are profitable in spite of the fines.
IMHO, the fines levied should be something like 3x profits from bad behavior so that we get around this "fines as a cost of doing business" mentality.
... I paid a fair chunk of change to get next-day on site support. When I needed it, what it really meant was "they'll schedule with their subcontractor by the next day". Which in turn became, "The subcontractor schedules with their own subcontractor". Which added up to 7 days.
I found a great way to deal with the "sales-pitch-when-you're-trying-to-cancel-service" routine...
Growl.
Seriously...growl.
When they start the sales pitch, just start growling to yourself softly, and increase the volume every few seconds or so. It's funny as hell to hear them break off nervously in the middle of the pitch, and gives you the space to ask "Do you need any other info to complete the disconnection?" If they repeat, just do it again. I've yet to see/hear the marketer that can complete a pitch whilst hearing this...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Seth Rightmer, that's my name, it's on my info page and it always has been. Thankfully, people with morals beyond that of a starving weasel tend to like my ideas and I've never had a problem getting a job.
Why would the employees be out of a job just because the corporate charter is dissolved? The board, officers and stockholders would be rightfully fucked, but all that infrastructure isn't going to just disappear.
How about you keep your mouth closed until your brain is engaged, so you don't look like a fucking clown in public?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Can you say Bhopal, boys and girls? I knew you could! Now, who here knows who went to prison for those 15,000 homicides? Anyone? That's right, those were rich important men, and rich important men don't go to jail! Don't you wish you were rich and important? Maybe if you put yourself and your possessions ahead of everything else in in the whole world, you can!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I just tell them, like I have for credit cards, services and other things I have cancelled: "Look, I called in to cancel my service (credit card, etc.). I didn't call for you to give me a sales pitch. There is nothing your company can do or say that will change that, so just cancel my service!" Oh sure, I get the occasional "But sir, I have a great offer for you..." comment. I just cut them off, "I'm not interested in doing business with your company ever again, just cancel my service!" I just do not let them BS me, has worked every time, with little or no transferring or on hold time.
Where things fell short was in the quality of people that they chose. The Gold Technical Support team was advertised as the equivilant of Tier II consumer support at Tier I. The ad for the job indicated that 'advanced technical skill' was a requirement. I thought that I could put my skills to use in such an environment, and it wouldn't be like the wonderful folks I worked with at HP DeskJet support while I was in college.
When I got there, it was apparent that they were picking these people up off the street by driving up next to them, slinging a bag over their head, and dragging them to the training classes. If you could breathe through your mouth and manage to read a script, you were good enough to be on the front lines of Dell's premier technical support.
Once you were inside, things changed. If you went over the desired average call time, you would have a Tier II standing at your desk, asking if they could "help" so you could move on to the next person. It wasn't because call time was so much a strict requirement as much as we always were 150+ deep in queue, and there was a two minute answer time guarantee. Of course, the center was only ever half-full, with 350 people on-duty for freaking Monday morning, and more than half of those employed because they had a pulse and could read. The return for this sojurn in paradise was a pool table in the break room, and a sandwich machine that only ever seemed to have ancient egg salad sandwiches in it. Needless to say, I escaped.
Now, as an IT admin, I choose Dell because I know how to game the system to get what I need, when I need it, every time. I have no illusions as to the inherent quality of their wares, and I would never purchase something from the consumer side of things.
I also never, ever call on Monday.
If found guilty, share trading is suspended until the completion of the sentence.
All profits from the running of the company are given to the victims over the duration of the sentence. If there are no profits or the company is running at a loss, the company is closed down.
All responsible members of the company cannot leave the company until the sentence is completed.
So, Ford could get 10 years for not recalling a car that they knew had a fault, etc.
1) The shareholders are punished, not just the corporate entity.
2) The employees don't lose their jobs.
3) The victims get compensation.
4) The punishment has an end, and things can go on afterwards.
This is my "Corporate Conviction Manifesto, version 0.1" and it's released under a Creative Commons license for you to all pick apart with flaws and issues and loopholes
Let me tell you about my experience with tech support. I used to be a manager in the tech support department of what used to be one of the top five computer companies in the US. OK, it's been long enough now, that I feel comfortable enough to say that it was Micron Electronics.
Our tech support was consistently rated number one. Better than Dell. Better than Gateway. Better, even, than Apple. And we worked our asses off to do it. We had two call centers in the US. We had a group dedicated to email support. We had a group that handled escalations from techs who were stumped. We had a couple of guys whose only job was to be available to step into a call if things started to really fall apart. And that was just the consumer side of things.
Our rules were simple: one call, one resolution. No "do this and call back if it doesn't work". The techs were not under intense pressure to get the customer off the phone - they were under pressure to find the problem and fix it the first time.
From a technical point of view, it was a resounding success. We fixed problems, we made unhappy customers happy (most of the time) and our RMAs were generally single components instead of entire computers.
From a cost point of view, it was an utter disaster. One or two TS calls completely erased any profit that the original sale generated. And, once sales volume exceeded a certain point, we had to outsource - although our outsourcing was to Canada and Atlanta. Still, that outsourcing was yet another cost.
Eventually the management above me ordered cost-cutting changes. That meant that support was not what it was. Oh, other things happened, too, with the company. The end result is that Micron Electronics is gone. I left the company when it became apparent that it simply was not going to be economically possible to provide the level of support that I thought was necessary. Not too long after that, the waves of layoffs started.
Now, I don't think that the current incarnation of Micron Electronics outsources their support like Dell does, but I also don't think that they provide the same level of support that we did in the mid 1990's. Of course, back then, it wasn't quite a commodity business like it is now. Unfortunately, nobody provides that level of support anymore, not even Apple, which, I guess, is the gold standard these days.
So I guess my point is that there's some level of support that should be expected from Dell (and others), but given what they charge for a consumer computer, the bar is set pretty low.
This is what Intuit is doing with QuickBooks "free" tech support. If you have any questions that remotely require thought, they will push a "silver" and "gold" tech support plan for extra $$$.
This is a pet peeve of mine, so I'll apologize in advance for the rant, but I think the idea of a so-called corporate death penalty, or revoking the corporate charter, is just a bad idea in general.
Why? Simple -- it gives corporate decision makers, i.e. the real, flesh and blood people actually responsible for these types of problems, an easy-out of the mess they created. The corporate death penalty is, it seems to me, just a giant grant of absolution for corporate officers who are, in many cases, committing out-and-crimes.
Think about it; did Enron's corporate charter, i.e. the legal fiction we once collectively called Enron the company, commit massive financial fraud? No. Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling and the other directors of Enron deceived the public and their investors about Enron's true state of financial affairs. These individuals committed the crime. The corporate charter had no part in the affair. Does revoking the corporate charter affect Enron's decision makers in any way, forcing them to accept responsibility for their actions? No. What it does is get them off the hook for any personal financial responsibility to the investors they defrauded.
This I think is a bad idea. Acquitting the criminals and focusing on the legal entity as the responsible party does nothing to detour this type of behavior in the future.
Revoking the corporate charter in situations like the Enron debacle only shifts blame away from the individuals responsible for the bad conduct. In addition, killing the corporate entity hurts the investors and the regular employees of the corporation, the folks who, in most part, had little to do with the fraud involved. The employees are now suddenly out of a job and the investors, the real targets of the fraud in the Enron case, are now left with nothing, having been bilked by Lay and Skilling and now, with the imposition of corporate death penalty, further harmed by the public at large. Is that what we want? Does killing the legal facade of a corporation really serve any purpose except to make us feel better when we associate the name 'Enron' with billions of dollars lost to overstated earnings and financial fraud?
In the end, the people running Enron created the mess that sank the company. The investors paid the price; they saw their hard-earned money literally vanish overnight. Revoking Enron's corporate charter wouldn't have fixed this problem. If we want revenge for the crime, we should go after the people who committed the fraud -- the former directors of the company. The corporate charter is just a legal smokescreen, and it should be treated as such.