Dell Computer "Marketing Error"

[84porsche]

I won't use Dell again either unless I buying accessories such as monitors and keyboards. I purchased a Dell Laptop a few years ago and 1 month out of warranty the power card/supply or something failed and I called them to see about getting it repaired. I was bounced to 10 different people not getting anywhere and finally found out from an online forum that the model (Inspiron 8200) had a defect in it and the motherboard was prone to power failures and Dell was not honoring the defective products. A new motherboard cost almost $800 from them and the whole laptop cost $1300. I was ticked at them and I understand a product being out of warranty but if you know about a product failure and don't address the issue with your customers then you have lost my business. My new laptop is a Sony Vaio and I have had it for a month already and it runs fantastic.

[Joe Bob]

PC Club....I want someone I can yell at face to face..

[Don Ro]

Originally posted by dafischer
And no, they don't have to honor that discount, because if I read their legalese, Item #12, paragraph 16, subclause 12, sentence 16, I'll clearly see...

Experience is what we gain when we read the fine print.
Wisdom is what we gain if we don't.

[Joeaksa]

To all you guys who are complaining about problems one or two months after the warranty ends, here is a free tip. Pay for the puppies with a AmEx card.

Most of their cards have (check on it) a free program that when you buy a major item using their card that doubles the standard warranty. One year on a computer or laptop, it just became 2 years for free. Dell would provide the first year and AmEx the second.

Have used it several times and AmEx was very easy to work with and it costs nothing. I now buy any large ticket items on the AmEx card just to extend the warranty.

JoeA

[svandamme]

believing an email with a 999 discount on laptops
and acting offended when it's not true...

if i'de get one of those, i'de laugh , yeah i'de try it , but i wouldn't expect anything from it, i definately wouldn't act all high and mighty and offended if it did fall through... you have to assume that something like this will probably not work even before trying, it's the only sensible approach.

[dafischer]

Originally posted by svandamme
believing an email with a 999 discount on laptops
and acting offended when it's not true...

if i'de get one of those, i'de laugh , yeah i'de try it , but i wouldn't expect anything from it, i definately wouldn't act all high and mighty and offended if it did fall through... you have to assume that something like this will probably not work even before trying, it's the only sensible approach.

The card that arrived from Dell through the US Mail offered 20% off on laptops over $999.

But thanks for your opinion.

[svandamme]

misread that, but even so , i'de still not believe it
it's still pretty much unheard off that any pc manufacturer would give out 20% on any model above 999

they might give 20% one one specific model they want to dump , something low spec, limited availability, 50 left or something, but not on all models...

maybe i'm to sceptic bout things, but i'll never believe any "markething" untill i have an official quote/order summary

my motto is , sales people are evil , so are consultants, lawyers , women and little children

[masraum]

I worked in an office with about 250-350 dell desktops. They ran pretty darn well most of the time. Most of the problems that I see in PCs are from users screwing Windows up. I now work at a different company where we use Dell laptops, and there have been a few hardware issues. I'd expect a few issues. Even Porsche has issues.

I've also worked with Toshiba laptops that worked well, and my wife has a toshiba that's about 4 years old that's never had a problem.

[Icemaster]

OK, let me clarify:

The company is crap, the equipment is mostly excellant. I've got a work Dell laptop, a personal Dell laptop, and am on my third personal Dell desktop at home. They're easier to buy with the features you want than building one yourself. I've done both.

The company now is another story. I've worked with two fortune 100 companies that had Dell equipment spread about 85% across their respective enterprise. Yes, other companies from Porsche to HP to Stanley Tools have manufacturing issues, no ones perfect. Never once did they come forth and willingly admit that they might have a manufacturing/assembly error even after they were shown empirical evidence that the end users payed us to capture and deliver that they had a specific failure with a specific product line. When you're replacing over 200 LCD inverter boards in 1 month in a specific laptop - to the point that you've exhausted the company's warranty parts supplies - some warning bell somewhere should be going off.

EG 2 - When NVidia announce that their chipset that was installed in a certain Dell model amongst others might have a problem, a month went by and not a word from Dell. Customer had to ask the Dell RVP what was going on about it, who then feigned ignorance. It was only after a threat to pull a recent order that Dell came back and said that they wouldn't do a "recall", however they would perform a voluntary proactive replacement after better than 150 failures in 2 months.

Over the course of 6 years, this averaged pretty much once per quarter.

Most of the suppliers these days a assemblers, it's the support after the sale that matters.