Despite some challenges in 2005, Kevin Rollins, president and CEO of Dell, insists the company’s business model is a strong one, and that he sees no significant changes to it in the year ahead. Rollins recently spoke with eWeek news editor Dennis Fisher and senior editors Jeffrey Burt and Brian Fonseca about such issues as customer server, channel strategies and AMD.
…you can ignore your customers leaving them zero recourse!
I have a Dell Media Center PC with a failing hard drive. Windows Event Viewer shows the “red stop sign” events but Dell “support” refuses to look at that, they have their own ‘tests’. So when I load programs, my music breaks up as the hard drive retries and retries. All system sounds also break up.
Recent PC Magazine shows plot Dell’s decline in support.
The lesson is clear: do NOT buy a Dell.
So what? I am sure you could come up with hundreds of similar stories about HP and Gateway also. I don’t really care about your problems with your HDD.
“So what?”
Its important that every customer receive the same treatment of quality support from Dell , otherwise they can decide to spend less money on supporting certain customer and everyone in that category suffer , usually if it work with one category and some people they tend to implement method to not do to the job until its absolutely necessary and thats really bad.
“I am sure you could come up with hundreds of similar stories about HP and Gateway ”
I would disagree , probably similar problem can be found , but by the hundred and that they refuse to replace , please provide your data so that we can analyze it for ourselves.
“I don’t really care about your problems with your HDD.”
So when anything fail in your system , and they refuse to do the job properly we will all be really happy for you , because you said nobody should care about your problem at all not even Dell. Personally if the HD is under guarantee and it failed under normal use , I know they need to replace it , but then again if they already tested it and it worked the problem could be on the motherboard or the HD connector. They need to fix the problem not try to avoid repairing it if its under guarantee.
“I would disagree , probably similar problem can be found , but by the hundred and that they refuse to replace , please provide your data so that we can analyze it for ourselves.”
I said only that there are “hundreds of similar stories” about HP and Compaq customer service. By sending me on a wild goose chase to find hundreds of people with the exact same problem who got the exact same response from HP or gateway you are basically just grasping at straws.
I said I don’t care about his problems with his HDD because one user experience is not a large enough set of information to draw a conclusion from. Never mind the fact that we are only hearing his half of the story and the Dell technician that looked at his system and said there was nothing wrong it may even be right.
” said only that there are “hundreds of similar stories” about HP and Compaq customer service.”
Thats not what you wrote , this is :
“I am sure you could come up with hundreds of similar stories about HP and Gateway also.”
One imply that hundred of HP and Gateway model have the same HD problem and that they too refuse to replace them , your second reply mainly state that horor stories similar like this can also be found from HP and Gateway. My take on this is that in both case your wrong , the problem need fixing , and you as a customer need to be pragmatic , since what they do to him , they will probably do to you if they decide to not deliver a good service.
“By sending me on a wild goose chase to find hundreds of people … basically just grasping at straws. ”
No , I am only asking you to provide me with the direct link to the information you claim to exist , I knew it whas something of the second answer that you gave , I just needed to see if I whas right or that you had data I did not have , I whas merely curious.
“I said I don’t … to draw a conclusion from.”
No , you wrote :
“I don’t really care about your problems with your HDD.”
I would aslo disagree with your conclusion , it imply that I as a customer am suppose to releave Dell of there customer service when ever they feel like it even do I paid for the same full service as others. If they dont replace a HD for one customer , it must be likely that its there usual answer for 1000 of others who dont have the guts or time to talk about it.
“Never mind the fact that we are only hearing his half of the story ”
That one I will 100% agree with you , it sound strange , but its not impossible , and if he fully paid for is machine and its still under guarantee , they need to fix it.
“and the Dell technician that looked at his system and said there was nothing wrong it may even be right.”
Yes , the problem could be the motherboard , the HD connector or a spyware or OS problem or newer driver problem , etc. This just mean that the Dell technician might have donne the job of looking at the HD and found it working with is test , but the client/user whant it to work all the time when he whant to access it.
The technician is not paid to be right , he is paid to fix the problem. Sorry I disagree with your entire line of answers , your just trying to blame the customer and gives corporate excuses. The only thing to do in those case is :
Replace the entire machine or offer rebate or refund of the purchase. Once you have proven you cant fix the real problem. Why ? :
A disgruntled customer wlll cost you sales , will harm your reputation for years to come and will go and publicise is problem all over the net everytime he see a discussion about Dell he will also recommand to other possible client to avoid your product at all cost.
Corporation are trying to cust cost and often cut corners in order to make more profits , in case like this they have tons of excuses to explain why the client is at fault. I dont buy them and neither should you.
Jody,
First, I would caution you on your “I don’t care about his HDD problems” – this seems to be the very problem Dell and many other manufacturers have. If it’s isolated to one person, I don’t care about it.
Well, his friends and family WILL listen to him. This is how names are destroyed – lousey service to individuals.
It also comes across as just, well, mean. Was the comment even necessary?
Nobody said Dell’s hardware quality in general was bad, rather, he was sharing an experience with their support. Of course we cannot judge the entire company based on one user’s experience! I doubt he would expect us to!
Why are you being so reactionary to everyone’s comments and opinions?
I have an HP UWXGA laptop. Bought it used. Have pounded it for a year. Only thing that went was the power supply. Went to HP’s online site, found the part, ordered it (at a dirt cheap price) and it was delivered a few days later. Perfect service so far.
I have not yet tried Gateway.
Dell is a real rip off…
I have a leaflet that they sent me for servers. It’s damn expensive and they put very little memory to their configurations. You’re probably better off building your own server with high-end spare parts.
“I have a leaflet”
You know, with that level of experience buying servers I probably shouldn’t question your judgment, but Dell servers are generally considered pretty cheap when it comes to bang for the buck.
With hi-end spare parts I can have a much more powerful server (2x Xeon or 2x Opteron + 2GB RAM or more, SCSI drives + Raid-5) for a fraction of the price that Dell asks.
You pay the brand name, that’s it. Doesn’t make sense to me.
You are also paying for service and support (or piece of mind). That’s the point of buying a brand name. If Dell’s reputation is faultering on that point, than that should be a big concern for them.
So you intend to argue that Dell servers are expensive because you an build a server cheaper from parts you already own?
Even is that idea did scale to more than one server you still have to consider that most companies are looking for a support contract and employee labor is not free. Never mind the fact that OEM’s get bulk rates on parts and you don’t, or having it cost more in shipping to order everything separately.
No, I was talking about buying brand new spare parts.
What does Dell’s tech support contract includes? Because where I buy my spare parts, they give me all support I need (hardware) without an additional buck as long as it’s still in the guarantee period. They change the same day.
//With hi-end spare parts I can have a much more powerful server//
So … you have high-end spare parts, just sitting around your shop, waiting to be used? Since they’re *spare* parts, that means you’ve already purchased them?
Must be nice.
The rest of us, we havent the time to build a server. I usually need ’em quick (1-3 days).
I agree with their business model and it seems to be one that works outside of just the PC business. Netflix and Geico have both been able to offer very competitive services with a similar “no middle man” business model and it seems to be a growing trend these days.
Even banks are moving to a more direct system with online banking.
It is difficult for other OEM’s to undercut Dell by offering cheaper direct sales from their site because they would have to undercut their own retailers to do it, and the barrier of entry is likely too high for someone to start “another Dell” and be competitive.
This is basically the same predicament insurance companies are in competing with Geico and I think Dell would be stupid to move away from that model.
Edited 2006-01-02 15:47
You have to give credit to dell for so wisely choosing their direct marketing business strategy and implementing it so well. The company has had great success despite being somewhat late to market. Dell has done a fantastic job of becoming a household name, I think a lot of which had to do with the amount of product placements dell secured in major motion pictures. However, as the company grew, it seams that they have begun to forget what made them great (read as ‘selling a lot’ not as ‘being of high quality’) in the first place. It is so often the pitfal of businesses – as stakeholders pressure them to increase profitability businesses, like dell, often cut corners. Unfortunately the corners they cut (like support for household conumsers) are what got people buying their products in the first place.
My relation ship with Dell is hate them love them…Recently i had to buy a laptop and Dell had a good one with 12inch screen but it is so hard to make a decision without being able to see it in a store.
Finally i bought it and its good but Dell is always my last choice..
“insists the company’s business model is a strong one,”
I totally agree with him. Why? Because a business in this century isn’t about giving you a good product. It is about getting as much saving and money out of a product as possible, cutting corners wherever possible just enough so as to not get caught or criticised.
For the past few years, i’ve seen (here in the uk) horrible hardware in Dell machines. They might trick you and say it has a large 100G Hard Disk, but what they don’t tell you is that it’s 5krpm, or 2Mb cache.
They may say it has 1G of RAM now, but they don’t mention anything about speed or latency.
They may even say they have a good SATA HD, and good RAM! and it might be true for a change, but they won’t mention the make of the motherboard, or chipset.. The list goes on..
To be honest. If you want a good PC, build it yourself.
My recent experience with Dell:
The OEM hard drives (all of ours have been Maxtors, thus far) Dell has been using in their GX270 systems are dying left and right on us. We recently replaced about fifteen of these drives in the last month or two.
Maxtor’s quality has also gone downhill in the past few years. I refuse to use them now.
Couple this problem with low-quality motherboards where the electrolytic capacitors on the system boards start to bulge and vent (physical evidence of high ESR and their inability to hold a charge properly – symptoms include lock-ups and random reboots), and you have a recipe for never buying a Dell PC again.
Granted, this is not strictly limited to Dell. But, it is a very visible problem with them, right now.
Personally, I like Dell over Compaq/HP, and Gateway even with the above problems. However, I’ll take a home-built PC clone with the parts of my choosing over any of them, any day.
Case-in-point: A Pentium 200MHz PC clone with a Gigabyte motherboard I built in 1997 is still running (as a firewall and print server). All parts are original except the hard drive – I downgraded to a used 2GB because I didn’t need alot of space.
His stated reasons for not supporting AMD are:
1. It would confuse our salesmen
2. Next year Intel will be much closer to being as good as Intel
3. We would have multiple CPU/MB platforms to support
It’s really interesting to me that he wastes so much time talking about the first two. This company is seriously starting to lose touch…
I’m an AMD fan and stock holder, but I salute Dell for sticking by their strategy. By using one vendor for CPU, they drastically keep an advantage over all of the other vendors out there. Dell may be able to create another brand that deals specifically with AMD platforms, but jumping camps for the DELL brand is not the answer.
but I salute Dell for sticking by their strategy.
Dell’s competitors salute them too!
I have had two Dell laptops.
The Inspiron 8000 had to have something like four motherboard replacements over a period of four years. (When I was talking to a tech about the first problem with my 8500, they said something about the 8000 series having faulty motherboards, but I don’t know if that was just to calm me down)
The Inspiron 8500 has very weak plastic on the palm-rests compared to the 8000 and every other laptop I’ve seen; I destroyed two hard drives accidentally pushing down too hard on them. Since then I’ve learned to not do that… I’ve also had to replace the power supply because the cords cracked, and then there was some damage to the power supply.
Battery life on each has been terrible. After a year, the batteries only last about 20 minutes rather than 2 and a half hours. This doesn’t make them very portable… This seems to be a chronic problem for all laptops though, or at least Sony’s laptops since a friend has an even worse version of my problem.
My parents have a Dell desktop; they can’t use the CD-burner as a CD burner because Roxio refuses to work and Dell can’t seem to fix it (reinstall! Well, we did). I know it’s not the drive itself because I got it running using Knoppix and K3b (from the DVD drive). Anyway, my parents don’t burn CDs too much but my kid brother wasted about 25 CDs before I figured out that Roxio always crashes halfway through regardless of where ‘halfway’ is.
Basically, I have a low opinion of Dell. A friend of mine suggested Eurocom for my next purchase; something higher-end that will be more expensive but not dirt-cheap.
As someone who goes out on the road to repair these things freelance, and curses like a sailor in a singapore whorehouse every time he comes across a Dell, it is MORE than obvious to me they are yet another company who’s existance is entirely based around preying on the ignorance and lazyness of the average consumer.
That the machines they have made over the past half-decade have made the old Packard Bell’s look GOOD speaks volumes. I find it truly amusing the easiest computers in the world to get into (to the point many are as simple as pressing two buttons) are the hardest to actually do anything with. There is proprietary… and then there is PROPRIETARY.
I genuinely feel sorry for their customer support people – the machines are such utter crap and they rape their customers so badly on the cost of parts (hundred bucks for a floppy or DVD combo drive?) that NOBODY who knows anything about computers would even CONSIDER buying one.
A fact proven by the article itself… AMD’s have proven themselves so worthy a competitor to Intel that most ‘in the know’ are buying AMD now, leaving the ignorant to buy intels… and of course Dell and ignorance go hand in hand. (Kind of like AOL)
You know, everyone has had their issues with a company at some time or another. i’ve had problems with everytime i go to mcdonald’s..they screw my order up. does this mean their business model sucks? no. it means they have issues with listening.
i work for dell. i can honestly say that dell does everything in their power to help the end user if something happens to their machine. unfortunately, like all companies, there are people who perhaps should not be answering phones that have yet to be weeded out. this leads to issues where the end user has numerous problems and cannot get them resolved. i’d like to point out that although some of you are posting your experiences with dell that certainly sound awful, i have had similar issues with compaq and other suppliers.
people speak. if dell is such a horrible company then they wouldn’t be winning customer service awards (check the website if you would like more info).
i agree that yes there are horror stories out there. for someone to blame dell over his “maxtor” hard-drive having issues.. yes dell sold it to you.. yes it sucks that it’s not working.. no it doesn’t mean dells suck. it means maxtor perhaps needs to improve the quality of their drives. do dell motherboards suck because they get replaced 4 times? no. perhaps the tech sucks.. or perhaps it’s a one off. you know what the important thing here is? it’s that dell REPLACED the motherboard when their were issues and didn’t ignore the problem.
it’s the same logic as people who call us to say things such as .. i have a virus for the 4th time!!! dell sucks!!
yah.. it’s the computers fault..
and to the guy who claims dell rapes customers for the cost of parts..have you seen our web store? yah.. we charge so much that we’re the top computer manufacturer in the world..
sure pal.
Edited 2006-01-03 13:02
Quote: and to the guy who claims dell rapes customers for the cost of parts..have you seen our web store? yah.. we charge so much that we’re the top computer manufacturer in the world..
Oh yeah, which is why people go to the Dell store, look up their model for something simple and come up with things like?:
DELL – 48X CD-RW and DVD-ROM Internal Combo Drive for Dell Dimension E310/3100/9100 Desktop Systems – $190
When the SAME DELL STORE sell’s sony and other dell branded drives near identical to that for $57, which is STILL twice what a LOUSY COMBO DRIVE should cost today. Lands sake I can get a 8x Sony DVD+/-RW for almost half that through New Egg. They don’t mention that the “Cheaper” drives can go into most any machine which is YET ANOTHER technique by which they prey on the ignorance of the consumer. You can tell they are “raping” the customers by the fact they have the EXACT SAME 48x Lite On (dell branded) Combo drive with no less than a dozen different prices on it ranging from $36 to $190 depending on what “model of the week” dimension or optiplex it goes into.
Hell, their CHEAPEST Dell Branded DVD+/-RW is a hundred bucks, damn near three times the going price… and if $67 for an I/O Magic ANYTHING isn’t highway robbery, I don’t know what is.
Let’s compare apples to apples. Dell branded Optical drives tend to be Lite-On’s, so…
DELL – 16X DVD±RW Internal Drive for Dell Dimension 9100/5100 Desktop Systems – $160
EXACT same drive, Lite-On Branded from New Egg – $39.99
Hmm. They do OFFER sony, let’s compare those.
SONY CORPORATION – DRU-810A 16X/8X/16X DVD+RW / 16X/6X/16X DVD-RW / 8X DVD±R DL / 48X/32X/40X CD-RW Internal Double/Dual Layer DVD Recorder – $76.46
EXACT same drive from New Egg – $38.99
Being able to slap your {censored} name on a Lite-on or Mitsumi and sell it for two to three times the cost you sell a sony for, which is already double the market price… We’re not just talking rape, this is sodomy to boot.
Of course, here’s the REAL kicker:
PLEXTOR – PX-716A 6X DVD+R DL / 16X/8X/16X DVD+R/RW / 16X/4X/16X DVD-R/RW / 48X/24X/48X CD-R/RW EIDE/ATAPI Internal Double Layer Combo Drive – $1,253.66
Exact same drive from New Egg – $109.99
Oh yeah, Dell doesn’t rape their customers. The shareholders must get down on their knees and thank whatever higher power they subscribe to every day, for the blessing that marketing and advertising can sway the ignorant and lazy… and people call Microsoft evil.
Edited 2006-01-04 13:19
I’ve been working on computers for a while now and I have to say that Dell does sell their customers garbage. Their older stuff was great, built like a tank, and reliable. But over the last few years the quality of the parts and the lockin have drastically reduced my opinion of them.
I personally own a Dell Inspiron 5150 that still gets better then 2 hours of batter life after 2 years and a week or two. But because of this machine, Dell Techsupport, and Dell Financial (Still carries the Dell Name) I will never buy another Dell. And I’ve done a pretty good job of preventing anyone else I have done work for or know from doing the same.
Two months after I bought the machine it started to not recognize that it was plugged in. No reason was ever given to me and I couldn’t get Dell to fix. A week later I call in again. Now everytime I open and close the DVD tray the machine reboots. Machine still requires a lot of work to get it to recognize that it is plugged in. Dell wanted to mail me a new power supply. I finally got angry enough to request a manager who still insists on mailing me a new powersupply even though the machine reboots every time I load a disc in the drive! Ahh, Dell Home support. Not all Indian call centers are created equal. I spoken with some very helpful people over there, but not with Dell. I finally dropped the $200 on an extended warrenty that I’ve had to use more then I want to. Almost time for a new machine.
As for the Desktop line up. Lets see 300watt power supplies on P4 2.8’s that can’t be changed out so no upgrades. Mysterious motherboard death syndrom. Hard drives that just quietly pass in the night. No AGP slots on some models. All of it lowest bidder.
Now as for the Maxtor issue, I’ve used a lot of Maxtor drives and the only one to give me trouble was over 3 years old when it passed so that is kind of news to me. But honestly, if Dell is having trouble with Maxtor drives then Dell should not use Maxtor drives. They shouldn’t pass the blame to the manufacturer. They should stop using them.