Slashdot Mirror
Lawsuit Shows Dell Hid Extent of Computer Flaws
Geoffrey.landis writes "According to an article in the New York Times, documents revealed in a lawsuit against Dell show that the computer maker hid the extent of possible damages due to a faulty capacitor in the computers it shipped from 2003 to 2005. Dell employees were told, 'Don't bring this to customer's attention proactively,' and 'emphasize uncertainty.' (PDF) 'As it tried to deal with the mounting issues, Dell began ranking customers by importance, putting first those who might move their accounts to another PC maker, followed by those who might curtail sales and giving the lowest priority to those who were bothered but still willing to stick with Dell.' In other words, the most loyal customers got the worst treatment."
This will surprise precisely no one who's ever done business with Dell.
And take the lowest bidder from China...
And outsource your inspection, testing and QC,...
You deserve what you get. I am actually sorry to see this happen. I expected more professional management system.
This isn't just capacitors. I almost stopped doing business with dell completely after a client came to me with a clearly failed nvidia chip on a model that had the warranty extended for just that problem. They had called dell during the warranty period and were told it was an issue with the OS and they needed to reinstall. They trusted dell. They reinstalled. They updated their firmware. The computer lasted another few months with the problem getting progressively worse until there was no video at all. I tested the system and determined definitively that it was the nvidia chip and asked dell to replace the board. I was given the runaround being told how do I know and its out of warranty. I pointed out that the warranty had been extended and my customer had called them during that timeline and was given bad information by their support team. They fought it and fought it and fought it some more until I called the rep that I do large orders with for corporate clients, and apologized to him that I would not be ordering anymore servers etc. from him. I explained the situation and was called back by dell corporate the next day offering to swap the bad board for a refurbished one. It solved the problem, but it really shouldn't have to go that far. I love using dell servers, but having experiences like that do not make me want to use their products.
Get a web developer
In other words, the most loyal customers got the worst treatment.
Political parties do much the same thing. The so-called base voters who would never consider voting for the other party (or staying home) can be and generally are ignored by candidates because they know their votes are secure.
Loyalty is a terrible position for a customer (or voter) to take. If you want results, insist on getting them up front, before you fork over the cash (or votes, or, in our political system, both).
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Of course they prioritized the situations with the most impact to them.
What's wrong with that?
However, selling computers with an enhanced probability of failure at the same price as if they didn't have that is fraud.
And "reassurances that no data loss would occur when a PC failed" is just gob-smackingly stupid fraud.
But it did. Right after tens of thousands of customers got fucked by it and shareholders lost $300 million in equity.
Now it's all better.
It not just "bad" caps. My 42" Samsung TV died, not because of defective caps in the power supply, but because the caps were inappropriately rated. They were 10V-rated caps in a 15V circuit. It was just only a matter of time before they died.
And thankfully I found articles on the cap issues before I plunked down $999 for a new TV. $2 in caps, and 45 minutes of my time solved the issue.
Well, $2 in caps, $23 in shit I didn't really need to cover minimum orders, and $20 in "overnight" shipping all because jASSper, TX was a shithole of a town and the local Ratshack doesn't carry anything but TV antennas and Verizon phones.
Use Digikey in the future. No minimum order and $3 shipping.
It's not a straw man. "Free market" has one meaning: a market with zero regulations. If libertarians don't want that, then they should stop saying "free market", and I really wish they would do that because it promotes ideology over moderation. If we drop the ideology that "regulations are bad", then we can get to the real adult work of deciding which regulations are net good and which ones are net bad. Do we have too many regulations today? or the wrong kind? Perhaps, but it's hard to discuss it because the ideologues are always ruining the conversation by shouting about free markets.
But, libertarianism is an ideology. It can never be anything else. Libertarians will never change, but the moderate alternative is simply "conservative". I don't consider myself conservative in most regards, but at least they are realistic instead of ideological.
Markets are good; free markets are bad. Moderation is good; ideology is bad.
I'm not exactly sure why I was modded troll for this. The problems that HP had with DV2xxx and DV6xxx notebooks, particular with the nVidia chipsets is well known, as is HP's refusal to properly deal with widespread issues of overheating and damage.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.