Dell: "Your brand is mud."

[pentachris]

Dell's website has shut down its customer support forums. Why? Their product blows chunks.

Want to complain on Dell's website about its customer service? Too late - the Customer Support Forums, operational until last Friday, have been shut down, apparently to try to quell bad publicity there about Dell products and especially after-care service...

Why? Could it be anything to do with the unbelievably corrosive effect on Dell's reputation that has followed its insistent refusal to deal with problems with the Dell Dimension 4600 power supply...

Noted Windows expert Ed Bott, who has been tying together some of the threads of the tale, comments: "Dell continues its race to the bottom with the new management strategy: If your customers continue to ask annoying questions, stop listening..."

Part of the problem seems to have stemmed from Jeff Jarvis, a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner, who summed up his anger in a letter to a Dell VP, saying: "This machine is a lemon. Your at-home and complete care service is a fraud. Your customer service is appalling. Your product is dreadful. Your brand is mud."

Link. (http://www.theregister.com/2005/07/11/dell_customer_support/print.html)

[lledcomputer]

Allow me to tell you some other things about DELL: 1) You cannot contact DELL's HQ. by telephone or in writing. THe HQ did not respond to my Certified Letter. It's telephone system is entirely encoded; and 2) According to a friend of mine in the Computer Industry DELL hasn't made good machines in 2 years. They are shifting their industry into the broader electronic field. Gateway couldn't do it. DELL can because of its name in quality. Nevertheless, DELL may be making the same mistake as made by Gateway. People in the computer stores are saying that SONY has made a come-back. It has tremendously improved.

[classicsoftware]

Dell only has one supporter on this forum and I assume he will be around to defend uncle Mikey....

If you buy from Dell, you get what you deserve....

I buy from a system builder. They sent a system to a client. It was basically DOA. After 15 minutes of troubleshooting, they told me to put the machine back in the box and built me another system. No questions.

[123456]

I'm starting to make my own desktops.
The last dell we've bought, (and actually recieved) was our Dell 8200. It's good, but I'd rather stick with you guys than Dell's support.

[jlreich]

I buy from a system builder. They sent a system to a client. It was basically DOA. After 15 minutes of troubleshooting, they told me to put the machine back in the box and built me another system. No questions.
That's awesome. And that's the way customer support should be. Take a few minutes to make sure it isn't something simple, if it isn't ship another out right away. ;) Not a 90 year old lady spending three hours on the phone with someone you can't even understand trying to do things only a qualified tech should be doing.

[i an not a nerd]

Dell...... great moniters, crappy desktops, okish laptops, nonexistint tech support...

My dad recently bought a Dell laptop (the Inspiron 2200) and he is very happy with it.

I on the other hand, am very disgusted by all the crap that was preinstalled on the laptop. There was a keylogger, a screensaver that crashed the laptop, and the Dell 'support programs' that ate up system resources. The cpu useage was at 13% ideling..... after getting rid of everything (thank god for spybot s&d and hijackthis) the 13% went away. The battery life also increased by about a 1/2 hour.

Classicsoftware: that is really good support... now if only Futureshop was that good.... they and Tosh are still saying that the other needs to replace my Tosh laptop that is recalled....

anyways,
death to dell

[123456]

Dell monitors are good, I must say. My P990 is still working well after 6 years.
But their support-I cannot say anything here, to due our rules.

[Variable]

tsk, tsk... Terrible how all you Dell bashers jumped on this without doing any checking on the story....

After just a brief google search I found out that this story (http://yahoo.pcworld.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,121836,00.asp) was was from early July, Dell closed 6 NON-TECHNICAL support forums related to rebates, canceling orders, etc. In mid July they reinstated "General, Non-Technical message board"

The original article from Dellbasher001 : ) makes it sound like they closed all Customer Support Forums. Any users wanting the information from boards still removed now have to use online chat, Email or call the support line.

Every time I have used Dell support for servers they have usually been very knowledgeable and generally pretty darn good. That is, once you talk to an American. My problem with Dell is the outsourcing of tech support to India. They should bring the jobs back and boost the cost of the PC's IMHO. But as long as the 8 million customers, PER QUARTER, they ship PC's to continue view price as the primary buying concern we are not likely to see a change.


I’m a shocked, nay DISMAYED! at the general lack of thoroughness the generally, open-minded and thoughtful readers of PC Guide have shown regarding this story.

lol

Variable

[PrntRhd]

Dell is just another large OEM vendor, you can buy from them or from another if you wish.
Just remember that sometimes you do get what you pay for.
;)

[classicsoftware]

The crux of the story is not the message boards. It's the rampant failure of the power supplies on the 4600 Series PC's. I recently went to a clients house and told him to get a new one from Dell. I was not aware this was rampnat problem. No will tell my attorney friend to demand a new one for free. When I had an Acer system out of warranty, with bad capacitors, they replaced the mobo for free because they new about the problem. They made no attempt to screw the customer.

[pop pop]

I won't even jump on this at the length and ferocity that I could. I'll just say a few things. Dell LCD monitors are pretty good. Dell has become the AOL of PCs. At the individual consumer level, that's end of story.

Variable, you are an IT guy, right? Is your experience with Dell tech support primarily commercial? I've heard they treat commercial contracts entirely differently. If that's true, it still is bad buiness--very bad. I can honestly say that I do not personally know a SINGLE person who bought a Dell (and I know a bunch), that has anything good to say AT ALL about Dell tech support--not one. That's bad business, too. A majority of my customers are current and former Dell victims who have just given up. I don't need to do any research on this, the research comes to me.

[anton muzic]

Hi all,
there's plenty of Dell (does it deserve the extra effort of a finger on the shift for a capital D??..i dunno.) product on ebay in Aussie...would the consensus here say to "buyer be EXTREMELY aware" of this stuff.
And what make is their power supplies on the 4600 Series PC's?

cheers
anton

[jlreich]

Hi all,
there's plenty of Dell (does it deserve the extra effort of a finger on the shift for a capital D??..i dunno.)
Haha! :D That's funny because I actually thought about that a couple of times. No Dell doesn't deserve the effort to make the capital, but I do it for the readers sake.

[123456]

I do it for grammar's sake.