Dell complaints

[drawmada]

Hi all. There are 5 Dells in my household. I am a computer tech, and yes I should know better, but I dealt with Dell because of convenience. As a father and on a limited budget, I don't always have 500-1000 lying around to throw at a computer. I bought from Dell using their financial services knowing how much I would pay and that yes it was more expensive then just plain buying a clone. All 5 Dells are still running great, although one has a recently replaced motherboard, but bear in mind the PC is close to 5 years old (Dmension 2400). My other machines are 4, 3 and a half, 2 and not even a year old. 4 out of the five had Windows in them, the last one is an Open Source PC. Tech Support has always been agreeable for me, although I have always dealt with a Canadian Tech service. I always asked the tech where they were situated. We weren't going to buy any more Dells because of Vista, and I had switched all our PC's over to ubuntu, except for my laptop which runs 2kPro, and while checking out the Dell site, we saw they now offered open source PCs, so we took the plunge and bought a 1525. My wife has no complaints with this system ... it just goes!

I know many people hate Dells, I can understand, but my personal experience with them has been great. Maybe my Dells were middle of the week ones, and not Monday or Friday ones LOL.

Don't flame me for liking them, mine work great!

Dells owned:
Dimension 2400 (board died after almost 5 years, replaced and runs great, note not an OEM board, an ASUS clone board)
Inspiron 1150 (never had problems with it)
Dimension 3000 (still runs great)
Dimension 3100 (runs extremely well)
Inspiron 1525 (the latest edition)

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

I'm one of Dell's biggest critics. I lead this site (though I didn't found it). There was a time when I would unconditionally endorse Dell products and service. That time was 1998-2001, during which span I bought one and worked for Dell.

The 1998 Dell I bought is still working, and always has. So in terms of MY experience, I'm 130% satisfied with Dell. It has outlived its life expectancy. But that was then, this is now.

Now, Dells out of the box have parts missing or uninstalled. Dells have BIOS bugs that can't be resolved after a half dozen revisions. Dell stiffarms warranty claims. Dell has been proven in the State Court of New York to be a fraudulent vendor. Dell Financial deliberately misleads purchasers, and subjects them to internal fraud and identity theft, without recourse.

If you've bought recent Dells, and had them work for you, you're extraordinarily fortunate. You should consider investing in your state's lottery, or a trip to Las Vegas.

Every issue above has been reported dozens of times, here and on Dell's own site. For every report you hear, there are at least 1000 that you don't hear. Sure, anything can break and require service. Why then does Dell have 8 times the number of BBB complaints as any other vendor? Those are all issues Dell refused to resolve. It's irrelevant if you don't have an issue--like your stuff all worked--but it could just as easily been the reverse, they all did NOT work, and Dell stiffarmed and stonewalled you on all of them, as they are known to do.

What would you say then?
_________________
Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[drawmada]

I understand where you're going with that ... I guess I am fortunate to have working Dells then ... I am a bit upset with one that had motherboard trouble, but I know from experience that computers are not eternal, and I am starting to see that I guess I am one of the fortunate ones.

My Inspiron 1150 is an example ... I heard lot's of horror stories about them, how the screen screws up, motherboard blows after so long, plus in back breaks, DVD freaks, and mine has no trouble. Like I said in my first post as a joke, maybe all the Dells I have were middle of the week machines lol.

And I guess that if I had problems with my Dells I wouldn't recommend them to people. It's too bad that Dell doesn't improve the situation. They should, but it seems that in the corporate world, as companies get bigger they forget about their roots. It's all about the all powerful $. Hopefully they will smarten up, and if not well they will eventually lose out.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

You'd think they'd learn. When they really cared about product integrity, their stock was splitting 2 for 1 every 9 months. Since they changed strategies in 2000, their stock has just sat there around the low $20s. If they don't care about products or customers, shouldn't they at least care about stock value? In 8 years they still haven't caught on to that.
_________________
Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[drawmada]