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

Yep

[TrisexualPuppy]

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?

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.

Re:Yep

[Rockoon]

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.

Re:Yep

[eldavojohn]

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.

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.

Re:Yep

[Lunix Nutcase]

You think you would get a tech to come out if you have only ever purchased 1 machine from them?

Yes. It's called a support contract.

Re:Yep

[Galactic Dominator]

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.

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:Yep

[localman57]

Yeah. Funny how all the service people are so eager to come to your girlfriend's house and solve her problems. Dude. Get a clue. Half the pornos in the world start out that way.

Re:Yep

[Culture20]

So... considering that bad boards were used to replace bad boards, how many of those GX270s are still around?

Your assumption is incorrect. They replaced the bad "boards" with boards that had good capacitors. We could tell whether a motherboard had been replaced by whether its caps in the GPU area were X-topped or K-topped. That visual indication was a big help when we decided to pressure Dell into sending us tons of motherboards for mass replacement before they went bad.

Re:Yep

[MrFreezeBU]

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..

Re:Yep

[ElectricTurtle]

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.

Re:Yep

[AmiMoJo]

I work in computer repair and can tell you this sort of thing is nothing new.

The capacitor plague of the early 2000s affected most manufacturers, just as the nVidia and bad BGA soldering (XBOX 360, PS3 etc.) plagues are now. HP and Microsoft have been the worst hit, with every HP laptop made in about the past 3-4 years having a faulty nVidia chipset and most early 360s eventually getting RROD problems.

Microsoft, to their credit, replaced the faulty motherboards with fixed ones. HP on the other hand just kept stuffing ones with identical faults in until the warranty period expired. They rely on people not knowing their rights as consumers, but if you are in the UK and bought one from PC World just call them and mention the Sale of Goods Act and "lasts a reasonable time" which is generally 5 years for a laptop.

The problem is that in the UK it is up to individuals to seek legal remedies on their own. We need a government body to look into these kinds of manufacturing defects and deal with them en-mass. At the moment the best we have is BBC Watchdog.

Re:Yep

[Culture20]

if you had read the article

You demand the impossible.

Re:Yep

[WarlockD]

I hate it when customers ask me to "reimburse you for the lost productivity" Its what lawsuits are for:P

Everyone makes mistakes, systems go down, things catch fire. Its why allot of companies that care about this don't do a single vendor. Why, even though they bought a million dollar EMC array, they have it backed up nightly with another million dollar tape robot.

Even at home, I make sure every computer I care about has a raid 1 array. There is nothing Dell, HP or even EMC can do when your drives fail. If you want to be reimbursed, you better be able to prove, in a court of law, that it was due to the incompetence of the Vendor.

Witch AIT did:)

Re:Yep

[skuzzlebutt]

<karma burn>
Is "loving too much" one of their problems? Caring about people to the point of losing self-efficacy? Working too hard and not spending enough "me" time getting to learn who the real Dell is, deep inside?
</karma burn>

My experience with them is just the opposite; I bought two Dimension 3000s and both had overheating problems (also well-documented on the internet including pictures of melted components and mobos, both acknowledged by Dell "off-the-record" by a phone rep). They tried everything possible to not fix the problem...by their own admission, their fanless CPU heatsink and externally-vented shroud scheme ("design" is too kind a word) was a failure, but they refused to do anything about it, and offered to send me new shrouds--parts that worked as designed and were not defective, per se. We played that game for months until the warranties expired and they refused to ackknowledge my existence anymore unless I bought an additional support package, even though the original overheating problem had not been resolved.

And that terminated, until the end of time, my dealings with Dell.

Re:Yep

[WarlockD]

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..

Oh GOD don't get me started on that one. They moved part's dispatch the same day. It went from talking with a previous field technician to talking with someone with less experience in computers than a bag of rocks.

I think they moved it back to Austin, but it was a good year or so before that.

PS - I am not faulting the phone support in India. They just have the same 60% turnover rate we do here so you never have experienced staff that you expect to pay for on Gold support:P

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.

Re:Yep

[Intron]

You obviously weren't buying parts during that time (2000-2005). All tantalum caps from Taiwan manufacturers were bad because they had all copied the same incorrect information from each other. And none of them admitted anything was wrong. So manufacturers were going nuts trying to figure out how they were getting all these defects that seemed unrelated to component supplier. Then there was a long period where you couldn't get any parts at all, even bad ones.

Re:Yep

[chriso11]

Actually, I doubt that they were using tantalum capacitors; they were aluminum electrolytic caps. Tantalum caps usually do not have a liquid inside and therefore do not leak, rather they explode.

obQuote

[girlintraining]

"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.

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.

Different measures

[OpenSourced]

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

This is not the first time, remember the GX150's

[icewalker]

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 entire discussion, in one post:

[localman57]

I've had seven dells, and they've all been perfect!

I've had two dells, and both died early! I'll never buy dell again

FIRST POST!

People know Dell squeezes component suppliers. What do they expect?

Of course it had defective components! What do you call Windows?

This is why I buy Macs

So what? Are you saying Macs don't use capacitors?

Dude! You're...Insert Whitty variation here...

now move along. Nothing else to see here...

Dell SOLD Fauly PCs

[Dan East]

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.

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:No surprise

[XanC]

I'll give YOU a hint, Google for M90 4GB. Because I've got a 64-bit CPU and I'm running Debian Lenny 64-bit.

GM does/did it.

[dlt074]

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.

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.

This is news?

[nilbog]

Has Dell ever sold anything but faulty machines?

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.

Worse than the actual problem

[HangingChad]

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.

Macs Don't Use Capacitors

[Greyfox]

Macs work by moving good karma around. If you ever open up one of their machines, there's not actually anything in there! This is not advisable though as opening them causes the karma to run out and they never work correctly again once you do this.

Re:Macs Don't Use Capacitors

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ever open up one of their machines, there's not actually anything in there!

This is not true, the innards of a mac appear differently to different people. To me it was a cluster of rainbow butterflies. Sadly, they all flew away when I opened the case.

Re:Macs Don't Use Capacitors

[H0p313ss]

To me it was a cluster of rainbow butterflies. Sadly, they all flew away when I opened the case.

Galloping herds of unicorns playing Beethoven gently through their horns!

Re:Macs Don't Use Capacitors

[roman_mir]

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.

Re:In other news...

[psbrogna]

So you've resigned yourself that consumers just have to live with shockingly high premature failure rates? Good luck with that strategy. I'm going to continue only using vendors that supply products which have a decent chance of lasting a few years and when they do break don't suffer subsequent failures shortly afterward.

If you read more closely than I suspect you have, this thread is not about debating whether hardware failure is inevitable, its about whether Dell is doing their job of assuring reasonable quality and the ethics of their order fulfillment policies.

Revoke the corporate charter

[spun]

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.

Re:Revoke the corporate charter

[istartedi]

Amen. Of course, it would be a lot easier if such a large fraction of our GDP weren't run by the mob. We've got hit-men (Military-Industrial complex), drug dealers (Big Pharma), torches (oil and chemical) and numbers-runners (finance).

Re:Revoke the corporate charter

[WarlockD]

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.

Re:LOL

[Znork]

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.

Re:obQuote - Formula is incomplete

[spun]

You give the fields of public relations and image management short shrift. They exist primarily to make the problems you outline disappear.

D - The likelihood we can pay someone to cover this up in the short term, which is all that seems to matter to corporate officers anyhow, is pretty high.

E - History shows that damage to a corporate reputation can be easily managed. It does not asymptotically approach infinity, as the Ford Pinto clearly demonstrates. Does anyone today refrain from buying Ford because the Pinto killed people? I think not.

F - It is much cheaper to simply lie copiously through advertising and PR to generate that goodwill. After all, it isn't about the truth, but perception. Perceptions can be bought.

In ten years, Dell will still be around but your memory of this incident won't be. You will most likely be buying Dell again.

Toyota will very likely survive and thrive again?!? They are thriving right now, they are the largest in terms of sales and production. Even BP isn't going to go under without help. Hell, what would a boycott of BP do? They still own the oil, which is only going to become more valuable over time. Oil underground is money in the bank, it even collects interest. BP isn't going anywhere, this will barely be a blip on the balance sheets in twenty years.

You see, all corporations suck to some extent. And people have busy lives. They don't remember the fact that some big faceless corporation screwed them over, that is a non event because it happens all the time. You live with it. You forget. When Exxon and Mobile merged, did they drop the Exxon part of the name because of the Exxon Valdez spill? Of course not, and ExxonMobile is doing just peachy.

I'd love to live in a world like the one you imagine, where fairness and justice just happen, because everyone does their part to stand up to evil. It would be a better world than this one.

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:Naive Question

[WarlockD]

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)

Re:Mod parent up

[yuhong]

The article claims that the evidence came from unsealed court exhibits and other court filings.

Re:Yep, old news

[Galactic Dominator]

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.