Dell Selling Faulty PCs

An anonymous reader writes "PC maker Dell has been accused of selling thousands of desktop PCs despite knowing the machines contained faulty components, according to recently unsealed court documents first reported about on Tuesday by The New York Times."

Comments

Re:Yep

[TrisexualPuppy]

Also, as a follow-up, at my company where we were running a few dozen GX270s which we purchased in the 2003-2004 timeframe, we had similar problems. Machines dying which ended up being faulty capacitors, of course not manufactured by Dell. (I had the same problem on an Abit motherboard from the same time period.)

Call up Dell tech support, tell them what's going on, and bam! Motherboard either overnighted, or a tech sent out within two days to replace the board at no cost. They knew what was going on, and it never took more than five or ten minutes to get things rolling. I'm not a Dell fanboi by any means, but every company is going to have supply problems.

Different measures

[OpenSourced]

Well, after so many years seeing software makers get away with it, I can understand them trying it out.

Re:obQuote

[StuartHankins]

True. Unfortunate, but true.

Maybe one day we will evolve to the point where people realize money isn't everything, but in the meantime I'd like to see criminal charges able to be filed against corporations. They want to be people, you say? Fine, let them be people in every legal sense too.

Re:Yep

[ElectricTurtle]

You might try Ring TFA. This is in regard to the bad capacitor debacle of 2003-5. Dell was knowingly replacing bad cap boards with boards known to ALSO have bad caps, knowing that the failure rate was over 90%. You might think twice about how valuable your service contract is when you realize that it was standard procedure to 'service' machines with parts that were virtually guaranteed to fail in weeks or months.

I KNEW there was a Lawsuit.

[WarlockD]

I cannot tell you how many times I have replaced the boards off an OptiPlex 270 and then the 280. It was just freaking insane. Dell's response was just horrid as well.

I mean, the sales people could blab all they want, but one look at the board and it was evident from a layperson that something was wrong. The best we could do as contractors is to just state its an "industry wide problem" (true) and that Dell will fix any system affected (partially true). I might like Dell, but I am not getting lynched by an irate manager because their sales team can't tell a straight lie.

I mean hell, there was not a DAY that went by that I didn't have 2 of those boards to be replaced. Not a week went by when the board sent that was "refurbished" didn't have the same issue. Toward the end, we started having motherboard swapping contests and I could do a 270 in under 5 min, if it was in front of me.

I do like what one client did. He apparently worked on the old XT systems and once he found out about the problem, he just replaced the affected caps himself

Re:Yep

[ElectricTurtle]

So... considering that bad boards were used to replace bad boards, how many of those GX270s are still around? I too worked at a company that bought that model. When I left there were more GX260s and GX240s, even GX150s in circulation that GX270s, and it was dept. policy not to ship GX270s to any of our satellite offices because they were too likely to fail. What does a service contract matter if they're just going to dump in more bad hardware? RTFA.

Re:Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be noted that the article indicates Dell went to great lengths to avoid telling customers about the problem.

Re:LOL

[ElectricTurtle]

What happens to the data in memory when your computer is crashing all the time? Data is not exclusive to the hard drive. And guess where the hard drives connect on virtually all Dell desktops? The motherboard! When the largest caps on a mobo fail, where do you think those are? They're at the power input mains and play a part in voltage regulation... and in the moment where they fail and go out of specifications / operating parameters, what do you think can happen? Voltage spike through the circuit, conceivably even up to the hard drives.

Re:Mod parent up

[d3ac0n]

And yet, back in 2005 when I was dealing with this issue, the FIRST thing the Gold Support reps told me to check was the Capacitors. The reps (I spoke to several) were quite candid about there having been supply issues related to the capacitors and motherboards, and always overnighted new ones out.

Should Dell have been more careful about testing it's supplies? Yes.

Should Dell have been more proactive in replacing known faulty systems? Maybe.

Was Dell negligent or unresponsive towards it's customers? No.

This lawsuit is yet another waste of time. The Market has already punished Dell for it's failures by stripping them of a large portion of their market share. No need for the legal system to get involved. That's just kicking Dell when they are down.

Re:Yep

[AmiMoJo]

It was mostly laptops, but some desktops that used nVidia chipsets were affected.

The problem is similar to the XBOX RROD and PS3 YLOT problems. Repeated heating a cooling cycles causing the soldering on the nVidia GPU (often combined with the Northbridge) to fail. Typical symptoms are no output to the screen (but still boots, you can hear the Windows start-up jingle etc.), wifi or USB devices dropping out and constant overheating.

Actually nVidia made the problem a lot worse by stating that their chips would run okay up to 100C. In fact their 8800 Ultra would easily hit 110C under load, but the laptop chips were not quite as bad. Still, 95C under load is not uncommon and makes the problem occur much more quickly. HP tried to "fix" it by releasing new BIOSs that underclocked the GPU, but of course people are upset that they are now not getting what they paid for. Oh, and the laptop still fails, it just takes longer so it is usually outside the warranty period.

If you are wondering why nVidia said 100C was okay it is because manufacturers like HP wanted to make quieter and thinner laptops, which means lower speed fans a smaller heatsinks/vents. Thus a chip that can run very hot without problems is ideal, except that as well as causing the soldering to fail it makes the laptop case so hot it can burn you. In fairness under normal circumstances the cooling system works well enough to prevent injury to the user, but where the heatsinks are small and made up of closely spaced fins they tend to clog up with dust very quickly. Sonys and older Toshibas are terrible for that too, but it is becoming more and more of a general problem with laptops. Naturally dust clogging is not covered by the warranty.

Re:Yep

[Sandbags]

Yea, except in Dell's retail machine support contract (differs from contract for business systems), it;s at "dell's option" to send a representative onsite, and entirely within their option to ship you a component and ask you to install it for them. When they do need to send someone, its some local crackpot sub-contracted, who's company (not even him) is paid somewhere between $60 and 80 for the job, regardless of how long it takes, and they only get paid that one time, even if they have to make several trips. Dell also tries pretty hard to make the time as inconvenient as possible, with a big window. For business, yea, not too bad service. They have to be good or companies won;t buy the stuff to begin with.

I've both dealt with, and have been a contractor. Dells policies have always been close to the bottom of the barrel for both us and the customers. They do the absolute minimum needed in order to either claim the issue is not theirs (software, outside issue, lightning not covered, etc), or they do the legal minimum to meet the claims required by state law. (NY won a huge settlement, but others still suffer under the policies that won those NYers money). Bait and switch is still VERY common when ordering Dell systems as well, and some replacement parts are not the originals, and are sub-par (a newer video card may not have the same specs as an older one, or may have compatibility issues, a replacement drive may not be as fast, this is common).

Dell's retail support contract is almost worthless, and their support staff generally are. Buy a nice high end system, and a low end system. Try calling support and see the difference in how you;re handled first hand.