Dell Computer "Marketing Error"
 

With yesterday's mail, we got a "Happy New Year" card from Dell, (I guess they like us since we bought a honker of a system for the business last year) urging us to "Celebrate the New Year with special savings from Dell". $20 off accessories purchase over $200, and 20% off desktops and notebooks over $999...time to pick up that additional note book we've been thinking of.

Long story short, go to check out and apply the discount code, and WTF?....5% off! Pick up the phone, call Dell to ask what the deal is, and get to listen to come smug little snot explain to me that the card was a "marketing error". 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 that they are not responsible for making good on "marketing errors".

Needless to say, cancelled the order, and as I'm hanging up on him, I can hear the perky twit asking if there's anything else he can do for me today.

Is it just me, or does this sound like a classic bait and switch?

Anyway, I'll share the codes out of spite:

$20 off is: PSCHN6680TH5D2
5% (not 20%) off is: 9?CR79?CLTN2LV

Pass them around...they're good till 01/31/06. Maybe they won't give the 20%, but maybe a lot of people will make it up in volume.

That's DFS... They're a bunch of putzes.

Dell sucks ass. But I've said that before and people just don't freaking listen.

Heard it before about Dell.

Ditto on the Dell sucks ass. Worst customer service in the world

You screwed up. You should have let it ride, received it, and then called to return it. They always offer a kickback to keep it-about 20%;).

Still time.

I have one cheapy P4 Dell for the kids. No problems with it or their customer service. I don't like their laptops tho.

Dell bites. Worst customer service ever. My notebook started to shut down and wouldn't re-boot. It happened 10 days out of warranty. All they would do is charge me $195 plus shipping to see what problem is.I couldn't lodge a complaint. I ended up taking it to some guy locally. Charged me $50. Says bad solder joint somewhere in main board.He couldn't find it.Believe it or not I brought it home and it worked. It started to act up again, so I turned it over and punched it and it has been fine ever since August.

Happy New Year

Brian

I support hundreds of Dell boxes and servers. I have been pleased with their service. I have noticed a decline in quality in the past few years. Their 270 series had wide spread problems. But they fixed it without giving us any grief.

Dell has sucked since I first got into the biz formally years ago. It's always teh same attitude about the products and service - "We don't make mistakes, we're Dell..."

Even when you chart out a line to them indicating a consistent repair problem with a line they argue back that it's still poorly trained technicians. Technicians that they trained and certified...

I'll never let my rep live down the time they had a recall on system boards for GX200's. He insisted it was a "voluntary proactive replacement" and that we not refer to it as a recall. He gets up and sez this ina meeting with one of our customers who responds with "...'voluntary proactive replacement'....sounds like Dell-ease for "recall" to me..."

Whole room lost it.



Dell sucks.

I have found their laptops make EXCELLENT rolling trays...




Dude....

I've used Dells for years(2 at home and 16 workstations and 1 server at my office ) and have had little problem, at least not enough to not recommend them. To those that knock them, Is any manufacturer that much better? Gateway? Compaq? Plenty of complaints, little solutions. I too got the 20% off card and called to order a laptop. Didn't work though.

Yes.

I've had great service from Sun, IBM & HP on servers and better support than Dell on PC's.

Dell cops an attitude that they could never possibly make a mistake, this seems to permeate the comany.

Apple has always fixed any problems I had to 110% satisfaction.

I have a Dell desktop(3 years) and have not had any problems with it other than virus issues. I have called there customer service several times(mainly regarding virus problem) and have had prompt service.
They seem fairly knowledgeable but understanding foreign accent is at times a problem.

Happy New Year!
.
I rec'd the same Dell "card" in the mail. Tossed it, not in the market.
.
'Bought a Dell Dimension 8100 in Fall of '01 w/a 3 yr. extended warranty - $70.
1 month prior to the end, power supply went out - they sent a tech out 2 days later to R&R it.
Overall, no prob's w/the rig - only w/the operator. :)
.
First two years of ownership, I called several times - got decent help.
After that, I really tired of calling their Tech Center and getting folks in India/Philippines who spoke very poor English.
They were always very polite, however.
.
Last time I called 'n spoke w/a lady in India, I asked where I was calling.
She said, "I'm not allowed to say that." (in an Indian tongue)
Me: "Am I calling India?"
Her: "Sorry sir, I'm not allowed to say."
'Suffered through 10 minutes or so, excused myself, and redialed a few minutes later.
Me: "Where am I calling?
Him: "You are calling Texas, sir."
.
I don't know a good laptop from a bad one, but prior to Christmas, Office Depot had a sale on a Toshiba Satellite for $899.
'Think it was this one: Toshiba Satellite® M55-S3292 14" Widescreen
.
http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=341576&&An=browse
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I think the snot 'n sass is due to today's narcissistic/arrogant society.
After all, there IS a parenting crisis in this country.

come to the dark side....you need a Mac.

Over the years I've bought literally hundred of Macs (not all for me mind you). Very few problems, and the ones we had got sorted quickly and to our satisfaction.

The only PC I have (high end game system) is a PC Club clone job built down the street. If it goes down I just haul it a few blocks away and they'll fix it (in theory...hasn't broken yet).

Ughh. Now I have to jump in and Mac bash. My ibook fried 5 logic boards in one year. Yes-Apple covered it. So what? I was w/o my computer 5 times for 2-3 weeks while it was having it's guts replaced. That sucked. I sold it on Ebay (the brand new one they finally sent me) for more than I paid for my E-machine (AMD) but half of what I paid for it. The E-machine has worked perfectly for a year now-although it didn't come with an OS disk. Even my Dell desktop supplies that.:mad: How the heck am I supposed to reformat? Oh well, I digress.

Moral of the story is all hardware companies suck quality-wise.

The question is whether they actually try to take care of you after a failure, or if they leave you hanging.

Or learn to fix it yourself. It is amazing how much you can find if you just put a simple explanation of a problem in "Google" and search.

As well have used Dells for years and found them very good and still use one of their laptops. Yes, they had a powersupply problem and motherboard problem on certain laptops, but otherwise worked very well for us. Our company worked for Dell (marketing) and we had almost 500 of them in the business with few problems...

JoeA

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.

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

Re: Dell Computer "Marketing Error"
 

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.