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.

Comments

It's just business?

[autophile]

I like this quote at the end of the article. Are they ha ha only serious?

...Dell said in a statement. "We believe that our customer service levels are at or above industry standards."

Re:It's just business?

[Divebus]

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.

Re:It's just business?

[Samalie]

In my opinion, not only does Dell "meet" industry standards, but generally they go above and beyond. At least, that has been my experience.

I'm a sysadmin, and have worked with Dell and their systems for the last 10 years.

I find they generally have a lower failure rate than other manufacturers I have used in the past, and their tech support has been second to none. I call them up, I get someone in North America, I explain what the problem is and how I've reached my diagnostic conclusion, and I have the part and/or a service technician in my home or office the next business day. Every time.

The best I had was on the Optiplex 5xx line a couple of years ago...we discovered a failure in their motherboard design which would cause CPU fan faults, and eventually fry the CPU. The only symptom before it all went to shit was the CPU fan running signifigantly louder than usual. We had 25 units with the "defective" motherboard...and once the problem was diagnosed & repaired on the first failed unit, Dell sent a small army of techs (well, they sent 10) to replace the motherboards in the 24 other PC's, regardless of the fact that not one of them was showing symptoms of the flaw.

And for the record, I'll get the tech to do a full MB/CPU swap, but other than that I'd rather just have the part & replace it myself...but if I want a tech to swap a failed stick of RAM or HDD they'd send the tech...I just find its a waste of effort on their part to send someone to do a job I can do in 30 seconds myself.

Re:It's just business?

[qortra]

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.

Re:It's just business?

[AKAImBatman]

I find they generally have a lower failure rate than other manufacturers I have used in the past, and their tech support has been second to none.

To offer a counter-point, my last place of work saw regular failures with our Dell server equipment. My personal favorite was when the SQL Server database went offline and no one could figure out why. At first it appeared to be a disk failure. But if that was the case, why didn't the RAID array continue working with the other drives? Turns out, the RAID controller failed. Corrupted all the data on the disks, too. We had to pull the previous day's backup and apologize to customers that the day's data had been lost. (Thankfully it happened on a Saturday.)

Re:It's just business?

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:It's just business?

[Volante3192]

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.

Based on personal experience, you'd win that bet.

Laptop my boss purchased for personal use, Latitude (well, consumer line...I don't recall if that's the Latitude or not). Busted keyboard. Literally ended up taking MONTHS to get it replaced.

Stupid techs never listened to the diagnostics, best part was it got shipped to a repair depot, they turn it on, "Computer turns on fine. User needs to type password in." was the return. NEVER actually typed anything otherwise they'd see the keys jam and repeat.

Fortunatly, since the initial issue was placed before the warranty expired, all work was done under warranty (even though it was finally fixed 4 months AFTER the expiration date.)

However, on our Optiplexes and Inspirons, service is all but flawless. PowerEdge support is like five nines of satisfaction, and the PowerVault tape loaders? Best. Support. EVER. They'll literally bend over backwards to support those devices.

I cannot, for the life of me, recall one single instance where I have been completely disappointed by Dell support on our business class products, and we've had to call in about 40 LCDs, 40 HDs, 30 PSUs, and single digit quantities of mobos, cd-rom drives, RAM, and LTO tapes.

Re:It's just business?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It's just business?

[UncleTogie]

I called in to cancel my service, it took over an hour of getting transferred around and each person had about 3 different sale pitches to toss at me...

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...

Re:It's just business?

[meatspray]

We deal exclusively with Dell, (about 800 end user units and 75 servers) their business support is indeed top notch. I was somewhat dismayed when I called in on my parents home system a year ago and ended up in India with someone reading from a script in broken English without any idea how to troubleshoot.

It depends on who you are, what you bought, what time you call and luck of the dice....

Re:It's just business?

[dwiget001]

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.

Re:It's just business?

[Ephemeriis]

We're an "authorized Dell reseller" if that matters to you.

We, obviously, recommend Dell to pretty much all our clients. The failure rate for individual machines and components is about what I'd expect from any manufacturer.

Their technical support is generally OK for the business-grade stuff (like your GOLD support) and crap for home customers. But I won't rave about it. I've been on the phone with absolute morons entirely too many times.

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. The problem is that Dell's on-site tech support is all outsourced to someone more local. We were, for a while, an authorized service center as well as reseller. We'd get the calls to go swap out somebody's motherboard or whatever. And I'll tell you right now that their testing/training does not qualify someone to actually work on their products. You really need the hands-on experience, which you don't get with their testing/training process.

We'd get sent out on calls to work on their printers because were were authorized and someone had taken the test... But we weren't given any special technical documentation. So we had no better idea where the parts were located inside any given printer than the end-user did.

Eventually it got too frustrating and we stopped doing the service calls.

Re:It's just business?

[greyspectre]

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. Exactly. As an escaped Dell tech (four years clean and sober, thank god!), I can verify that we were absolutely required to support our customer through to resolution of problem, 100% of the time. If we had to send parts, we sent parts. If we needed a tech and parts, we sent a tech and parts. If they needed a system replacement, we could swing that too.

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.

Re:It's just business?

[Bobb Sledd]

OH, let me tell you.

I work for the government. Apparently much of our equipment has contracts for support.

This particular item did not.

So I had a network printer where the network card failed. I also found out that it was a NIC that was on a faulty replacement list.

So, I called HP support and explained to the person my problem. "OK, we will need $59 by credit card to speak with technical support." He says.

"But the card is on the faulty NIC card list, I shouldn't need to give you anything."

Still refused. I asked to speak to a manager. Frustrated, I think he hung up on me.

So I called back. I explained the problem *again* from the beginning, what I had done to troubleshoot, and explained that the card was on a faulty recall list.

Still they refused without collecting a $59 fee. I explained that I did not need to give them a credit card because the NIC was on a faulty recall list. Still she refused. I hung up this time.

I called back a 3rd time! This time, I explained to the gatekeeper everything from the beginning. He seemed surprised that the first two people didn't know this card was on a recall list and sent me right over to the JetDirect tech support (without paying a $59 fee).

I spoke to the JetDirect support tech, calmly explained everything I had done to troubleshoot, and he immediately agreed that the NIC was faulty, and that it appeared to be on the recall list. He then put me on hold.

He came back and said, "well it does appear this model is on the list, but the serial number you gave me is apparently not in the range of serial numbers in the recall. So, unless you can show us a receipt showing that the card has been replaced in the last 2 years, we will need $499 for a new card."

I nearly choked. I thanked him for his support and that I would look around for a receipt of the swap (highly unlikely around this office).

I finally found a replacement for $78 shipped, got my office to acquire and pay for it, received it, put it in, and got the printer to work again.

But I dare say HP helped me even one little bit.

Re:It's just business?

[Feanturi]

And I'll tell you right now that their testing/training does not qualify someone to actually work on their products. You really need the hands-on experience, which you don't get with their testing/training process.

I can attest to this - I worked for Dell for three years until they just recently shut down our call center (the Edmonton site, in Canada - curse our rising dollar!). For the past year my job was to field calls from the onsite technicians Dell sends out to fix laser printers. They'd call in having no idea what they were supposed to do, and would frequently make the problem worse in their struggles, prompting me to replace the whole printer rather than trying to replace the parts the tech broke, since it would just be the same inexperienced/untrainable tech going back out with the new parts. It wasn't always a training or documentation issue either though, these contracted locals were often bottom-of-the-barrel labor force types that had no concept of basic troubleshooting. You get what you pay for.

Re:It's just business?

[HardCase]

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.

Re:It's just business?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell doesn't do onsite service. They outsource it to Unisys and BancTec. Don't expect better service from HP as they do the same.

As far as quality of the actual systems goes, all of the pieces, if not the final assembly, are done by ASUS, Foxconn and a handful of other overseas companies. Dell and HP are marketing and distribution companies.

Anecdotal evidence of support problems will not prove a case either way. Statistically all of the major hardware companies are very similar. Shipments to support cases is around 4%.

The reason everyone (and I do mean everyone) has shitty support. Is that tech support is a shit job. Anyone who has ever worked the phones will tell you this. Most techs last around 6 months to a year. Consumer support, speaking with the unwashed masses, 8 to 12 hours a day, trying to squeeze bits of useful information out of the lady on the other end of the line who thinks her monitor is her computer. Who installed Microsoft Live Support AND Norton 360 with all the addons even though their system with Preloaded with McAfee. The guy sticking floppy disks in jewel cases and shoving them in the CD drive. Angry people trying to get you too pay their phone bill because they downloaded a porn dialer. The guy with wire snips trying to cut his AGP video card to make it fit in a PCI Express slot. Who is pissed off because everyone keeps telling him he can't.

*twitch*

Anyone that even comes close to having a clue will find a better job. I promise.

Re:It's just business?

[Divebus]

I found a great way to deal with the "sales-pitch-when-you're-trying-to-cancel-service" routine...

Tangential to this is dealing with Telemarketers. I do the "We Don't Use That" method which I found on the Internet somewhere - and it works:

TM: How much copier toner do you need today?
ME: We don't use copiers.
TM: You don't? How about printers?
ME: We don't print anything either. Not one printer here.
TM: Oh... Ok, then have a nice day.

TM: You've won 4 days and 3 nights at Time Share Harbor in Orlando.
ME: Sorry, I can't travel. I'm under house arrest for the next eight years.
TM: Oh... uh... sorry to bother you. Goodbye.

TM: Hi, I'm with MegaTeleNet and we can aggregate all your phone and Internet services
ME: We don't use Internet and this is a payphone.
TM: Don't use Internet? How does your business survive without Internet?
ME: Don't need it - all of our customers are walk-ins.
TM: Oh... sorry to bother you. Goodbye.

TM: Hi, we can save your business thousands of dollars with our new light bulbs.
ME: We don't use light bulbs here.
TM: You don't? How do you see anything?
ME: Everything here is natural lighting and we leave at dusk.
TM: Oh... sorry to bother you. Have a nice day.

TM: Would you like to save a bundle on long distance?
ME: We don't use any long distance service.
TM: You don't make any long distance calls?
ME: No, all of our customers are local.
TM: Oh... sorry to bother you.

Of course the correct answer to the last one is "We use Skype."

Re:It's just business?

[elrous0]

I had a friend who would always answer telemarketing calls with "Could you call back later? I'm masturbating"

Re:It's just business?

[rugatero]

You mean this?: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=un_PjRXV5l8

Re:It's just business?

[Hyppy]

You say "right" as if what's "right" for business is the "right" thing to do.

Just because a profit is reliably turned, does not mean that the entity in question isn't morally bankrupt.

I could reliably turn over a large profit selling young boys in southwest Asia, but that doesn't make it "right".

This is a no-brainer

[moderatorrater]

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.

Re:This is a no-brainer

[oodaloop]

the accent comment also means any strong accent, even southern or north eastern ones. Yeah, there's nothing I hate more than calling tech support and getting Mayor Quimby.

Re:This is a no-brainer

[PawNtheSandman]

Beats getting Apu who spends 5 minutes trying to convince you his name is "Steve".

Re:This is a no-brainer

[SwordsmanLuke]

True story: An Indian telemarketer called my brother one day and gave his name as "Abraham Lincoln." Apparently, they had been instructed to use Western names...

Re:This is a no-brainer

[sm62704]

Support's the sort of thing that makes you customers for life or loses customers for life

Customers? Fuck the customers. Who needs customers? Customers are a dime a dozen. There are six billion prospective customers on this planet and there are more customers born every day.

That's the 21st century way of doing business.

As to the accent, you won't find many American accents that can't be parsed by someone in America. The accent has two bad things in people's minds. First, when you call someone for support you expect them to speak the language that you used to buy the product, and what's more to speak it fluently and understandably.

Second, if the phone jockey has a foreign accent, the person calling for support is reminded that the thieving, unpatriotic bastards they bought the product from are shipping American jobs overseas. Nobody likes a traitor, and an "American" company that ships jobs overseas is seen by working people as traitorous. Because you know, it IS traitorous. Only a traitor sells out his native country for filthy lucre.

Re:This is a no-brainer

[zakezuke]

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. I found that support outside of this country, while access tend to be stronger, often are easier to understand than natives. Case in point... I think I was getting support on a tape drive unit back in the day where it was normal to buy a Wangtek mech, slap it in a case, offer some qic-02 / qic-36 board and some minimal dedicated software. Drivers? We don't need no stinking drivers.

Anyhow I was told "You were fishing for crawdads and got your self a june bug, better sketter those gizzards and hush that puppy".

To this day I have no idea what they meant. Even if there are some thick accents in India, I doubt Apu would tell me to hush that puppy.

Re:This is a no-brainer

[Anonymous Coward]

If he asked for your brothers name, he should have used wikipedia's page on Hindu Gods, then tape the conversation.

Re:This is a no-brainer

[Feanturi]

Heh, there are plenty of Americans that are difficult to understand, especially as you go further south. The ones that pronounce the letter "R" with two syllables drive me nuts (sounds almost like they're attempting to say "error"), and there's usually a lot of "could you rephrase that please?" coming from me. Pronunciation aside, there are also quite a few Americans that have such horrible grammar that you need a linguistics degree to figure out what they are trying to communicate.

Triumph or tragedy?

[Bombula]

While it's great that a big corporation is being held liable for false advertising, aren't there worse examples out there than computer technical support? What about false advertising for medicines, diets, and health-related products and services? Alternative medicine is one gigantic - and very dangerous - scam. What about all the food product labeling - low fat, organic, and all that meaningless garbage that is totally deceptive? And what about the goddamn P3N15 3nlArgment pi11s I paid through the nose for - those farking things didn't work AT ALL!

Re:Triumph or tragedy?

[SatanicPuppy]

So holding a company accountable is a bad thing because they didn't hold every company accountable at the same time?

Whenever one company is held accountable it makes it easier for others to be held accountable.

Anyway, the class action suits do a decent job of holding big pharma in check. Juries just don't give out the same awards because your computer repair was a couple of days late.

Re:Triumph or tragedy?

[Colonel Korn]

So holding a company accountable is a bad thing because they didn't hold every company accountable at the same time?

Whenever one company is held accountable it makes it easier for others to be held accountable.

Anyway, the class action suits do a decent job of holding big pharma in check. Juries just don't give out the same awards because your computer repair was a couple of days late. 1) Dell tech support isn't half bad.

2) You think that "big pharma" is currently "in check?" The insane markups and massive profiteering that occur at the expense of millions of lives a year are the happy result of our effective class action lawsuits? Just checking.

Re:Triumph or tragedy?

[wolf12886]

My god, it appears Adware has finally made the jump to humans.

Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[spun]

Simple games theory. If the expected payoff of fraud is greater than the penalty, fraud is inevitable. Here's a thought: instead of fines, revoke the corporate charter for serious crimes. Only in America can people still get the death penalty while corporations can't.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[spun]

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?

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[AshtangiMan]

This is a great idea. I think one of the worst things that happened to American corporate culture was the removal of the periodic renewall of the charter. This was put to a general vote of the region hosting the corporation, and gave the people a chance to revoke a corporations charter because of poor business practices, excessive polluting, or some other offensive behavior. This would be good for market based capitalism, as it would provide not only an incentive to do "good" for the region, but give small companies a chance to swoop in and take over for the bloated corporate entities that spiraled into the profit optimized corruption model.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Penguinisto]

If a corporate charter gets revoked, the government doesn't suddenly own it (unless there's some extreme circumstance, they can't). What would be more likely to happen is that the condemned corp gets split into divisions, its assets may be sold off to the highest bidders (or given as compensation to a plaintiff), shut down and dissolved, or any combination of the three (e.g. dissolve parts of a corp while selling off the rest, etc).

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.

/P

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Tufriast]

I use to a work for a company that did outsourcing for Dell named Stream. Flat out - I will admit we turned away as many people as possible. We offered hardware support for 30 days, and some software support, and if the support window was closed (30 days) it was $30 per incident. That support window handled most software issues, and most hardware issues. I felt kind of scummy doing it, so when I was laid off, I was happy. I'm pretty sure it the outsourcing went to some place overseas. I recall once billing for some software support to the tune of $120.00. The software itself was installed improperly - which was the cause of the problem. (Don't mix Office and MS Works.) This was circa 2001, and after that experience I learned - NEVER get a Dell.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Martin Blank]

Do you know how many thousands of corporations there are in California alone? How would we gather the necessary knowledge? What's to keep someone rich from funding a campaign to highlight some minimal yet slightly gray conduct of a much smaller competitor in order to force their dissolution?

That kind of thing is much better handled by the system in place now.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[GaratNW]

Well.. where do you draw the line for defining murder? If you're driving a Ford pickup, and it randomly explodes due to a fuel line problem, and it kills you. Your family will probably get a lot of money from that. Then they have a recall because it's killed 200 people over 3 years. That ranks up there with the worst serial killers of all time. They'll walk away with a lot of cash settlements, a product recall and a lot of PR work to do. And then they'll probably have the same thing happen 15 years later. No, I'm not citing a specific example, but car recalls like this have occurred. Most of those companies are still steamrolling ahead. By that view, if you want to commit murder, creating a faulty product that kills people is certainly the best way to get away with it.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[morgan_greywolf]

I'm pretty sure it the outsourcing went to some place overseas. I recall once billing for some software support to the tune of $120.00

No. My step-son used to work there as well (laid off within the last 6 months or so), so I can say with confidence that Stream still does support outsourcing for Dell, and they still pull shit like this.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Hognoxious]

in america corporations can't be incarcerated, nor can their officers.

O RLY?

And while this guy didn't go to the slammer, some say his way of avoiding it was rather extreme.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Jimmy_B]

Here's a thought: instead of fines, revoke the corporate charter for serious crimes. Only in America can people still get the death penalty while corporations can't.

Sounds great in theory, but would be terribly destructive; the actions of a few bad apples could cost thousands of people their jobs. A better solution is to replace the corporation's government; make all outstanding shares non-voting (thus stripping the board and the investors of their power) and hold an election for company CEO, with the old board ineligible and low-level employees making up most of the vote.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Anonymous Coward]

corporations don't commit fraud, people commit fraud.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Teilo]

By that view, if you want to commit murder, creating a faulty product that kills people is certainly the best way to get away with it. Yes, except for one not-so-minor requirement of law called mens rea . In other words, to use your example, in order to charge someone with murder, they actually had to have the intent to commit murder.

If you believe that Ford motor company has the intent to commit murder, you are welcome to your opinion, however illogical it may be.

And I thought I was a conspiracy theorist.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[spun]

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?

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[spun]

I concede the point.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[spun]

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!

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[quanticle]

Martha Stewart was not incarcerated for anything that her corporation did. She was incarcerated for lying under oath regarding a completely different company - ImClone. In the ImClone case she wasn't an officer of the company, but a mere shareholder who traded illegally based on insider information.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Z34107]

Firstly, the Indian government owned 49%. This wasn't "greedy and stupid", this was just "stupid" and yet another reason why centralized economic planning is bad.

Besides the fact that an industrial disaster, however negliegent and stupid, isn't exactly murdering hitmen, there's a problem with your wikipedia entry:

The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia.
Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.(April 2008)

This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality.
Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page. (May 2008)

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

Now, I can't speak for INDIA, but in America, those who put "yourself and your possessions ahead of everything else in the whole world" would have gone to jail and the corporation fined.

That is, IF it wasn't stopped by the appropriate federal agency when the groundwater became toxic and livestock started dying. If it wasn't stopped by a civil suit FAILING action by said government agency.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[hattig]

And what do you do if, say, GE is convicted of murder and 300,000 people no longer have jobs? All share trading is suspended before the court case.
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 ... so you fix them, become politicians, and enact them.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[Penguinisto]

Since when does speaking out against corrupt corporations equal class warfare?

Therein lies the rub - you went a bit beyond those bounds, to wit:

"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?"

Seriously... if'n that ain't flirting with class warfare (if not sexing it outright), then what is?

/P

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[UncleTogie]

Also, Bhopal is in India - their country, their laws. Not ours. Nothing to do with class warfare and the perceptions of material possession; just (unfortunately) the way it is.

If the corporation involved wasn't American, I might agree...

Doesn't matter just where it happened, either. Doesn't seem that the value of a life need change on the other side of an imaginary line in the dirt/water...

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[spun]

The name Love Canal mean anything to you? If not, look it up.

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[spun]

Seize the assets and give it to the employees then, they can probably run it better than a corrupt management, don't you think?

Re:Dude! Yer gettin' a slap on the wrist.

[rmckeethen]

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.

Dell guy quoteth:

[Applekid]

"Dude, you're getting a fine!"

Not my experience

[TomRK1089]

Personally I've not experienced these practices the article speaks of. My video card died on my Latitude D630 about a month ago, and it took me all of 30 minutes to speak with a technical support staffer on the Dell website and schedule someone to come out the next day. Maybe this is a case of "you get what you pay for," since I've got the next-day service contract -- maybe people with lesser maintenance contracts and whatnot get the runaround. Just my perspective.

Re:Not my experience

[Oxy the moron]

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.

Re:Not my experience

[Pingh]

I can't say I've had any bad experience with Dell for support. Amoung the items I purchased was a 32" TV. When it arrived and I plugged it in, it went into a constant cycle of reboots which made it impossible to do anything with. A quick call and they had a replacement in 2 days, and free shipping on returning the defective item.

Another thing I like about Dell support is that if you're in an IT firm, you can qualify yourself as Dell certified. That way when you call in you can basically say 'Hey the hd is dead on this laptop' and provide a warantee number and they'll take your word for it. They won't ask you the 300 questions that it would take for them to determine the hd is actually dead.

But this may be the service -now-. I know they moved several call centers back to North America, and I can't say I've had any experience with that prior to 2 years ago.

/me shrugs

Re:Not my experience

[TheLink]

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 :).

Re:Not my experience

[Collective 0-0009]

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...

Re:Not my experience

[sm62704]

You don't always get what you pay for - that's what the trial was all about. You do, however, usually pay for what you get, although not always.

Re:Not my experience

[IorDMUX]

maybe people with lesser maintenance contracts and whatnot get the runaround. Yep.
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.

Re:Are there ANY big box companies with good servi

[OrangeTide]

I'm serious, this is a good discussion point. I disagree, it's not a good discussion point.

Wrong ad for the article

[jmichaelg]

Sometimes computer-placed advertising just ain't what it's cut out to be.

On the way to rtfa, a full-screen Dell ad popped up.

Or perhaps, the software is very, very clever and Dell was trying to discourage me from continuing on to read the article.

Good.

[Xest]

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.

Well, yes. That's the problem.

[swm]

Dell said in a statement. "We believe that our customer service levels are at or above industry standards."

Not my experience at all

[FranTaylor]

I find Vonage to be very helpful.

OF course, I:

- figure out everything I can and have the info at my fingertips when I call
- always treat the person on the other end of the phone with courtesy and respect, even when the only verb tense they know is present participle
- don't expect miracles from entry-level tech support
- have been with them for years and they value me as a customer

The sad thing about fines is

[swb]

...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 hope the 'next day on site' counts...

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

... 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.

Which car company do you work for?

[Weaselmancer]

A major one.

Re:tip of the iceberg

[Spatial]

XP home, which doesn't support multiple cores Yes it does.

What it doesn't support is multiple processors, which is a non-issue for the market XP Home is intended for.

Uhh, do you know the definition of the word greed?

[spun]

Greed (noun): A selfish or excessive desire for or pursuit of more than is needed or deserved, especially of money, wealth, food, or other possessions. What is wrong with greed? It's in the definition of the word: Excessive desire for more than is needed or deserved. You can try to redefine it to make it seem more palatable, but thankfully most of humanity is never going to get on the "greed is good" bandwagon.

Re:Hmm..that's odd..

[Collective 0-0009]

If the GP has been in tech since '92 and hasn't heard a thing good about Dell, he's in his Mom's basement, deaf, or works for HP. SHILLL!!!!!

Re:tip of the iceberg

[cmdr_klarg]

What? No mention of selling new fancy dual core computers bundled with XP home, which doesn't support multiple cores, effectively wasting half of the expensive computer that the customer bought? XP Home will support multiple cores just fine, but not multiple CPUs (i.e. it will support a dual core CPU, but not 2 single cores CPUs).

Re:Finally

[^_^x]

Oh snap...
Yeah, I've returned monitors in the past by just giving them any old tag, but last time they had to be really specific and asked for a desktop's tag if I didn't know the original system it should have gone with.

Also, just once I had a new tablet from them that they had no record of the tag for. I basically had to find a copy of the invoice from our purchaser and give them the Dell order number that contained it. This was after the poor phone tech had looked up our company record and scrolled back through it ("It says you guys ordered $40k worth of stuff last month. We should just be able to take your word for it!" of course I know what it's like working a helpdesk and not having clearance to do a quick easy fix for someone...) That took two 1.5 hour calls to run through!

But still, from the 90s on, they are still my favorite premade system company since they're (historically) of good build quality and always very easy to disassemble. Also two things that sold me my laptop several years ago was that they were the only game in town for a laptop with an (upgradeable-ish) nVidia 3D card and a hot swappable secondary battery. Build quality and support quality are getting shaky lately; still, before this at work we were using HP-Compaqs! God, I replaced 1-3 worn out power supplies a week for about a year there... now the DVD-ROM/CDRWs are wearing out and gluing discs inside them, leaving gum on the disc hub! Now THOSE are bad PCs!

CORPORATE MANSLAUGHTER!!!!!

[Pax681]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_manslaughter

http://www.hse.gov.uk/corpmanslaughter/faqs.htm

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/03/15/41798/corporate-manslaughter-legal-q.html
i am pretty sure this law was brought in due to a few things where the coprorate body was deemed to be liable for deaths caused but there seemed to be inadequate laws to punish the heads of the coprorate bodies

it's not just businesses but also the national health bodies here in the UK and also local/regional councils too.

from what i gather the charges being brought are rare and even rarer is a successful charge.