Dell complaints

[Space Goat]

According to the International Data Group, the top 5 US PC makers are Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, Toshiba, and Apple. I've graphed how the PC manufacturers compare to each other:



Now, here's a graph comparing the number of Better Business Bureau complaints over the past 36 months for each company:



As you can see, Dell has an astronomical number of complaints, over 14,000. HP has 1,960; Gateway has 749; Apple has 712; and Toshiba has 11 (at least, Toshiba America, Inc., on Park Avenue in NYC does). The number of complaints for Dell is not proportional to its sales volume, indicating the amount of complaints stems not from normal business activity but from shady operating practices.
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[FallenAngel]

Yep. Too bad that the "black hats" at Dell claim that this is just sour grapes, spilled milk, and a direct proportion to their market share. I guess this is why all other top 5 companies combined don't even scratch the surface of Dell's overall complaints, right?

In other words, they think their staffers are all retards.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Fascinating. Thanks, Space.

Although the numbers I've seen put HP and Dell much closer in market share than the 2:3 shown above, there's no getting around Dell having seven times the complaints.

And bear in mind, these complaints are NOT idle whining about offshored unintelligible tech support. The BBB makes you fill out a long form to file a complaint. You wouldn't bother if your complaint was about how many times you had to repeat your service code before 'Chad' understood what you were saying. These are "I didn't get what I paid for" complaints.

Let's look at the numbers in Dell's own terms. Dealing with vendor reliability, they use 'defective parts per million' (DPPM). If that number gets anywhere near 100, all-night meetings and international conference calls start flying like bats out of a cave at sundown.

According to the BBB results, Dells 'defective customer transactions per million' is ONE THOUSAND. If a Dell vendor had a DPPM of 1000, that vendor would be drawn, quartered, keelhauled, scalped, crucified, and never do business in this town again.

Like any bully, Dell holds 'small people' to high standards and holds itself to no standard whatsoever. Remember when Packard Bells were good? And then bad? And then gone?

Dell is bad.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[i_escaped_dell]

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Yeah, yeah, just like that bunch of holier-than-thous who watch TV 12 hours a day for the sole purpose of being offended and complaining to the FCC.

OK then, assume the worst case. Since HP's support is offshored too, assume all 2000 of their complaints were about 'Chad'. Subtract that number from the 14,000 Dell complaints and you still get 12,000 genuine complaints from Dell customers who could not reach a resolution within the channels Dell 'provides'.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[i_escaped_dell]

I'm in no ways supporting Dell but according to the prior bar graph Dell holds about a 12% greater market share then HP and about 12,000 more complaints. So for the sake of having all the facts I'd like to know how many units is that 12% market share equal to. Then compare that to the number of complaints and compare that %.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Industry analyst IDC puts Dell's global market share at "18.1 percent, down from 18.6 percent a year ago". Gartner puts it at 15%. Both put HP's around 16%. The difference certainly ain't worth the bandwidth to banty.

Those are the widely-published 'worldwide' figures. The BBB only tracks US transactions. In the US, Dell is at 33% and HP is at 23% (zd.net analysis). Watch much cable? I do. You see a Dell commercial every 10 minutes. You see a HP commercial once a month. Dell spends an ordinary American's lifetime wealth every month on television advertising, and only gets 1.5x the sales out of it? That otta tell you something right there.

OK, rounded off, Dell sells 3 in the US for every 2 HP sells, or 1.5 times as many. The exact conversion factor for 23:33 is 1.435. Assume the percentage of 'Chad' complaints from both companies are equal (why wouldn't they be?). Divide 14,100 (the chart goes OVER 14,000 but not by much) by 1.435, to equalize Dell and HP 'exposure'. Now the numbers are 'only' 9826 to 1960 (the other exact number, HP's) . Or, Dell generates 5.10 complaints for every ONE that HP generates, adjusted for US market share.

5.1-times ain't 7-times, but it is more than twice twice and half again.

(Thanks for making me do the research and the math. I need the mental exercise--Dell laid me off, about the same time their products and services went to shit.)
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[FallenAngel]

5:1 ratio of complaints, and only 3:2 ratio for sold systems et al. Again, they must think we're all sub-80 IQ. Adjusted for "market share" it'd be 4:1 or 5:1 for products sold as compared to complaints, which we see it clearly ain't.

So Dell...care to explain this one away with some magical, fantastical spin doctoring, knowing full well and bearing in mind that we're drowning in your bullshit by now?

Go ahead...I dare ya. C'mon...

[sickofdell]

Maybe it's just that the company doesn't give a damn until another business that can put them out of business receives complaints about them. Don't do business with dell. My business is switching from dHell to IBM. It won't be for another year that we are rid of dHell's, but at least the process has begun.
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http://www.tgdaily.com/picturegalleries/gallery-20060731-1.html

(ok, so it's not mine, but it's freakin cool)

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Nope FA, it's 5:1 after the 3:2 has been adjusted out. Before that, it's 7:1.

Unfortunately, as was pointed out to me by a mainstream journalist looking into the same issue, it doesn't prove anything.

An 'unknown number' of HP complaints come into BBB disguised as complaints against the storefront retailers where they were purchased. The BBB numbers are only valid for direct complaints against 'the name on the box', and there's no way to correlate that between HP (who does a lot of shelfspace-retailing) and Dell (who does little or none).

Apples and horseshoes. Fun exercise though. Thought we had them there for a minute.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[david (aka dvdpiddy)]

[Space Goat]

[FallenAngel]

Thanks for the clarification Rocke. 7:1 is even more pathetic than my erroneous 5:1.

Way to go Dell! Keep convincing yourself that you rule!

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Mainstream journalists have even pitched doing a phone survey to obtain complaint numbers that can be compared but the editors so far are not willing to budget such a survey.

Consumer Reports runs their own survey of subscribers and the results just came out. They only ask 4 questions--did it require repair?, did support solve the problem?, how long did you spend on hold?, rate the staff.

Desktops: 85,000 responses. Dell rated 15, HP rated worse at 19, Gateway at 21. Desktop support satisfaction, Dell is tied with Gateway at 54%, HP at 53.

Portables: 49,000 responses. Dell and HP are tied at 18, Gateway at 19. Support satisfaction, Dell got 56%, HP and Gateway tied at 54%.

Compaq was at or near the bottom, all around. (Guess who's not going to be around a whole lot longer.)

Nowhere in any of that do you see numbers like 5:1. And according to the magazine, the differences of a few points are not statistically significant.

You'd think, with Dell themselves saying their customer experience needs improvement, that you'd see substantial differences between brands. But the way this report looks, the whole industry is running at about half-speed, and Dell is no worse than anyone else.
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[FallenAngel]

Bear in mind the results are a false positive or negative all over. Why? Because even though the company itself is well known and well respected, how many subscribers are there as compared to overall units sold?

It's a jaded review if anything. How much you wanna bet Dell has a huge subscriber base in an outfit like that to counter any bad press?