Slashdot Mirror
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."
You think you would get a tech to come out if you have only ever purchased 1 machine from them?
Yeah, its easy to get serviced when you are an important customer that does regular business.
"His name was James Damore."
I remember severe issues with the SFF GX150 some years ago. If you ever had one fry and need a motherboard replacement, that is because the Power Supply's fan was reversed; instead of pulling hot air out, it forced hot air into the case. I informed Dell and more than 80% of the GX150's I had were like this. They never owned up to the problem and just kept going, replacing dozens of motherboards along the way. Idiots!
The truth is usually just an excuse for lack of imagination.
GM released certain models where the stepper motors for the odometers where bunk. they quickly came in for repair and were fixed no questions asked... the only problem was that they were fixed with the same defective part because GM couldn't get good motors built fast enough. the thought was to fix them make the customer happy and then fix them again with good parts when they broke again.
the customer was happy i guess, up until the second or third visit.
lots of that kind of thing with the radios too.
i shudder to think how bad it's gonna be under the new management.
Yes, we had the very same situation in my previous company....At the beginning of this fiasco... As their supplies of motherboards dried up, their willingness to overnight the need parts disappeared. Fast forward another two months, and we were looking at 1 out of 4 GX270s out of service, and Dell unwilling and unable to honor their warrant support (Silver in this case). It took papers from company council to get Dell to agree to a PFR (Proactive Field Replacement) on most GX270s in inventory (~100). During this process, we were told that only certain production runs, which were identifiable by asset tag) were faulty. 3 months later, they were back to replace those also.
In the end, we certified our internal helpdesk technicians as Dell authorized warranty support. By doing this we were at least able to recoup some of the costs, as it does not take much extra time to swap out the motherboard when you are already inside looking for failed caps.
Shortly thereafter, our account reps were calling, asking why their sales volume had dropped off....
Just one of many Dell related storied I can tell.... The one with them moving Gold support to India with no warning was another fun one..
How exactly do you send a corporation to maximum security prison?
You don't, you give it the death penalty. Carve it up and sell the parts to the highest bidder. Confiscate all bonuses from the corporate officers involved in the decision, use the proceeds from the sale and bonuses to pay off any 401(k) retirement plans invested in the company. Let the other shareholders eat the loss as a warning to perform better due diligence and not invest in criminal organizations. After all, if you invested in the mob and they got busted, you wouldn't get your money back, right? Organized crime is organized crime, it doesn't matter if the leader of one organization graduated from Yale and the other graduated from jail. If a corporation engages in criminal behavior, kill it with extreme prejudice and make all responsible suffer. If investors get burned a few times, they will make it a point to only invest in socially responsible, ethical companies.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Eh, if it was HP everyone would bash them. Dell just so royally screwed up recently that they deserve our ire:)
To be really honest, I would subscribe to consumer reports for some data and make a judgment call based off experience. There is just so much anecdotal one off stories (My Dell works great! Mine works like crap!) that its imposable to rate an entire product line of one. I swapped out thousands of GX270/280 boards. However, except for that flood, there just wasn't that kind of volume on other systems. Laptop's or otherwise.
My perspective, after working with Dell and talking with other enterprise vendors, is that Dell is no worst/better than its competitors when it comes to support but all vary greatly in the quality of the products year to year.
Just an example, IBM laptops T43 are a solid rock that Nokia still uses allot of. But the updated model the year after, T60, just had a slue of driver issues.
Judge by what your needs are, what some professional "trusted" reviewers say and look to see if the company will still be around for your support contract. (Poor MPC Users:P)
The article claims that the evidence came from unsealed court exhibits and other court filings.