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The Ignominious Fall of Dell
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bill Snyder discusses the ignominious decline of Dell, one akin to that of Computer Associates, leaving the company forever tainted by scandal and a 'shocking breach of faith with customers.' Dell's pioneering business model and supply chain helped make desktop computing ubiquitous, affordable, and secure. But years of awful quality control and customer service have finally caught up to the company in a very public way that will do irreparable damage to the company for years to come. 'What we've learned about Dell recently doesn't qualify as an understandable mistake. Only a rotten company sells defective computers and lies about it.'"
Really is there any PC maker that is 100% great and excellent? I'm sure that Dell's faults aren't any worse than HP, Toshiba's, Gateway's, or any other major maker of PCs.
About the only way you can make sure you get decent PC hardware is to build it yourself or have enough knowledge to sub in and out parts if need be.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Does anyone here care to name a PC manufacturer with a spotless record of turning out nothing but quality, or who has always been 100% up front about dealing with legitimate manufacturing problems?
They've all turned out crap and they've all reliably concerned themselves with their own bottom lines first and foremost. It doesn't excuse Dell, but I can't really see why they need to be singled out either.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
I'm not an apple fanboy, but this isn't the same class of issue.
Now -- if Apple had been selling the iPhone 4G for four years and ignoring the fact that a statistically large number of them were suddenly dying of a known bad issue, then intentionally shipping out 'repaired' iPhones with -more- bad parts in them, then I'd agree.
There's a lot of evidence to suggest that Dell not only knew about the cap issues beforehand, but that they intentionally misled a lot of customers about the problem and when they did fix them, they did so with more bad boards.
Now you're assuming Apple cares about any product more than 2 years old. After all, they just cut support for first generation iPhones and iTouches, and those are just a hair over 2 years... I guess that's a better business model, though - planned obsolescence in 24 months.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The fact is, the consumer doesn't buy reliability. The consumer buys emotional factors, and brand perception, and a good marketer can make the consumer buy any garbage whatsoever.
This is not the end of Dell. Nobody will remember this in a few months, any more than they remember HP and "pretexting" when they buy a printer or a PC.
Bruce Perens.
A whole new generation gets to learn how business works. A company starts and is nothing, why should people buy from it? So the company focuses on quality, low prices and customer satisfaction. People like the company so much they swarm to it. Over the years the company grows larger and larger. Eventually they have capped out their market share, they can grow no more. This is a problem in our growth driven society. We believe that any company that is not growing is failing. So the owners of the company have to grow in other ways, they have to give less to the market they already have... and try to get the market to pay more despite getting less. First the sacrifice from within... departments are cut, benefits are cut, employees are given quotas that grow daily until they are doing so much work they can barely focus on any one thing at a time. Eventually the company realizes it can't cut anymore from within and still function, so it starts looking for cheaper suppliers. Bonuses are given on a yearly basis so an executive can come it, buy tons of faulty components, get his bonus and be gone before the shit hits the fan. Eventually the company is so distrusted by the public they are relegated to a brand name sticker wall-mart sticks on junk it bought from some 3rd party. But the big wigs at the company walk away with their wallets over flowing, open a new start up... rinse and repeat. It's the same with nearly every American business.
From the article linked to this one:
The documents were connected to a lawsuit filed by Web hosting service provider Advanced Internet Technologies (AIT) against Dell in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina on Nov. 1, 2007. AIT sought $75,000 and punitive damages from Dell for breach of contract, fraud and deceptive business practices.
So they WERE found guilty of fraud and deceptive business practices on a small scale with AIT. And so it balloons into a shitstorm even Michael Dell can't sweep under the rug. This is about far more than lemons....
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I think the big problem is that people are focusing on just Dell. I've stated in a previous post that Lenovo had the same problems, they were aware of them but did nothing to recall or even stop selling the defective machines.
The biggest problem is that consumers don't read tech sites before purchasing, which means they are beholden to the whims of the tech company they are buying from. If they choose to deceive customers it will only become apparent when it's reported by large media organisations.
Look at what happened with the Xbox 360. The first generation were RROD devices and it took a class action law suit with major media reporting it before Microsoft changed their tactics. I have no doubt they were well aware of the problems well before the class action suit, yet still shipped defective products. It took 2 generations of Xbox 360 boards before the problem started to be resolved. Yes, they did do a lot to mitigate brand damage, but by that stage it was too little too late. Yes, I do own a 360, and I have had a RROD.
The biggest problem is that these companies suffer no government backlash, the whole idea that "the market will sort itself out" is total bullshit. So long as companies are not heavily scrutinised after they are caught deceiving the public means they can just claim ignorance and move on. Even with harsh consumer protection laws (like here in Australia), the idea that you can lobby your way out of it sickens me.
Now you're assuming Apple cares about any product more than 2 years old.
What other cell platforms are getting significant updates after two years?
The difference is that Apple just posted 65 critical patches to iOS, half of which allow arbitrary code execution. So you're not getting those now-published and officially acknowledged holes.
And Apple holds your actions illegal if you attempt to fix them yourself.
So it's not just the open publishing of security patches that won't be fixed for old phones, but legally prohibiting the owner from fixing those patches on their own.
Yeah, they won't support it, and legally restrict you from supporting yourself!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!