A new version of customer service

[PtBetsie]

I just finished reading the piece on Yahoo financial about Dell's version of customer service and their financial problems. The two are certainly linked. Would anyone but Dell tell a university math department that the pc's all died because they were using them too much to do serious work? :) The story lists many more "excuses" like that, all from Dell's wonderful customer service department.

[kiosk]

I wouldn't be surprised to read about such behavior from dell - after all, they are notorious penny-pinchers, selling underpowered hardware on the promises of "future upgrades" to first-time buyers, while their computers turn out mostly non-upgradeable in the end. That's very Compaq way of thinking. :rolleyes:

[jlreich]

Over the last few years it appeared that Dell was getting their crap together. Guess not.

Several months ago I had to contact Dell about my wifes laptop that is under 'next day on-site' warranty. I tried to call them and all I got was a busy signal. After trying for half a day I tried to connect through online chat. Finally after timing out several times I got on with someone and got things setup for a tech to come out and replace the KB and the palm-rest. (yes I could have done it myself, but if something were to happen it wouldn't be covered if I did the repair work myself. ;) )

It's never a good sign when you can get nothing but a busy signal on the support phone. ;)

[tompatricks]

same happened with me not exactly the same thing but a bit similar to it

[PrntRhd]

Let's just say there is a bit more to the story:
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/06/suit-alleges-that-dell-shipped-12-million-faulty-computers.ars
Even when Dell did get around to replacing faulty motherboards, a contractor that Dell hired to look into the issue found that Dell's replacements were themselves faulty. Dell apparently learned that Nichicon's capacitors caused problems in 97 percent of cases over a three-year period, and that the quality problems were ten times worse than the company had originally estimated.

[jlreich]

The newly unsealed documents allegedly show that Dell was aware that capacitors from Japanese partsmaker Nichicon were almost certain to fail in the machines they were selling. But the company continued to sell these parts to everyone from Wal-Mart to Mayo Clinic, opting to focus on damage control rather than quality control.
That sounds about on par for Dell. It's a shame that a company that was good some many years ago, was largely responsible for making computers affordable by the masses, really just doesn't care for its customers anymore. :(

Someone somewhere in the company had to at least had an inkling that there would be a backlash at some point for allowing this. :confused:

You know I used to work for a company that had a great reputation that was built on more than 60 years of good service. In a few short years it was almost completely ruined by the "slap it on, we'll fix it later" mentality by the current management. People used to be wiling to wait long periods of time and pay premium prices for service from this company. There were generational customers and others that would go nowhere else. Not anymore...

[FrankSG]

It,s a little sad because some years ago Dell was a top of the line computer.