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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."
"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles 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." -- Fight Club.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I bought three last week, and their customer service already knew what was going on. A tech already came out next-day to replace the faulty components. No questions asked. Next?
From the article,
According to company memorandums and other documents recently unsealed in a civil case against Dell in Federal District Court in North Carolina, Dell appears to have suffered from the bad capacitors, made by a company called Nichicon, far more than its rivals. Internal documents show that Dell shipped at least 11.8 million computers from May 2003 to July 2005 that were at risk of failing because of the faulty components. These were Dell’s OptiPlex desktop computers — the company’s mainstream products sold to business and government customers.
So last week you bought three computers dated between May 2003 and July 2005? The suit names Optiplexes with bad capacitors and that's what you purchased last week? Or are you telling me that this continues to this day in 2010, seven years after it started?
You may have other problems than faulty computers -- like a faulty lie generator or even employment at Dell.
My work here is dung.
The article states the PCs were sold between 2003 and 2005, and they suffered from a rash of bad capacitors produced in Asia. The bad capacitors affected other computer manufacturers as well, but seemed to affect Dell worse.
This information is nothing new, and essentially it sounds like the problem was so bad, and infiltrated the industry to such a depth, that even replacement machines would likely fail from bad capacitors as well.
The tiny summary specifically makes it sound like Dell is selling machines with these problems now, which is totally misleading.
Better known as 318230.
Did they reimburse you for the lost productivity? No? Even after they knowingly sent you a faulty system, you're still willing to give them a free pass. You're free to bend over for whoever you like but I'll take my anger standing up, thanks.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
The actual problem was bad enough, but instead of owning up to it Dell decided to mount a PR campaign aimed at emphasizing uncertainty. And told their reps to lie about it.
The actual problem didn't bother me as much as Dell's response.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It's not an 'assumption' at all, if you had read the article, you'd know it was a confirmed practice, exposed during the legal proceedings described therein. Congratulations on being able to pressure Dell into doing what they should have for everybody, but don't be an asshole implying people are ignorant just because their experience differs slightly from yours. Anecdotal evidence only goes so far.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Actually, badcaps failure modes are so often so nasty that they can certainly cause data loss. They computer won't just 'fail' at once, but will probably begin with silent corruption as power availability teeters on the edge of tolerances, then move into crashes as memory and other components gets more significantly underpowered during load, then go on to many crashes per day, into crashes during recovery and then eventually death.
If you identify the problem during the first phase, after a few random software crashes, then you probably won't have significant data loss. But if you get to the point where you've had a dozen crashes during recovery attempts, then you may end up with partially corrupt file systems and certainly a few missing files.
I fully agree.
If the US wants to view corporation as a living entity, they should have corporal punishment.
Baring that, I think fines should be levied agents a corporation in percentages instead of flat numbers. Fining BP 75 million is nothing. Fining them 20% of gross profit each year till the spill clears up? It will be done in a week.
Macs work by moving good karma around
- yeah, around and out of them. Macs work by rearranging the dark forces within them, that's closer to the truth.
You can't handle the truth.
As countSudoku() posts, Dell's probably going to be extra careful with hardware for the next short while and the quality will improve for at least a while. If it's possible to take advantage of that extra caution and if you were going to purchase soon anyway, it might be possible to score better than usual machines.
I wonder if BP's board of directors had similar thoughts about their CEO, Tony Hayward.
He won't act like an idiot again.
Okay this time we really mean it.
We directed him to not speak in public.
We've restricted him from public appearances.
Counting on corporate shame as a method for fixing behavior is ridiculous. There is no such thing as corporate shame.
brandelf -t FreeBSD