What Dell Doesn't Want You To Know

[Turbot]

I never thought I'd say this, but having been a PC user for 20 years, having owned over 10 Dell PCs personally, I am so disenfranchised by my whole recent experience of Dell, I'm now strongly considering switching to Mac.

Why? I want a machine that is stable, well supported, that lets me get on with my life and work. If there is an issue, I want it resolved fast.

I have lost a huge amount of time in my recent dealings with Dell, and here is what I've learned and observed. If you have issues with your Dell computer, here is what you may be up against.

I think Dell would prefer that you didn't know what follows:

Dells recent approach to business includes:

1) Poor quality control
2) Time wasting customer service
3) Interactions that are incredibly expensive to the customer in non monetary ways (that they totally disregard the external cost of).
4) Ultimately, Dell limiting their liability to a refund despite negligent behaviours on their behalf
5) A culture of mixed-integrity, occassional flagrant dishonesty and manipulation towards customers

Based upon a pattern of repeated experiences I have borne witness to, Dell regularly get it wrong, and then they cost the customer time, money, morale, opportunities should the customer wish to make this right.

As part of this, Dell load resolution with effort on the customers behalf and "friction points".

FRICTION POINTS are designed to slow people down, or affect their momentum.

This pattern is so prevalent throughout my recent experience with Dell over the last 12 months that it seems obvious to me that this is by design.

I don't know how consciously Dell doing this, and my experience relates to the home team, but my guess is somewhere there is a profit optimisation consultant in Dell who knows exactly what they doing.

From my experience, I surmise / detect Dell are applying the following principles in how they run their business:

BIG PICTURE: Dell know they can save money on quality control by releasing products that are effectively in BETA with lots of bugs / niggles / issues, in the thinking that, if it's quite good but not right, they can get away with it most of the time with a very clear approach to limiting liability via time wasting customer service.

The formula is as follows:

"REGULAR POOR QUALITY CONTROL" + "TIME WASTING CUSTOMER SERVICE RIDDLED WITH FRICTION POINTS" + "NAIVE BUSY CUSTOMERS" = Dell can get away with a lot.

In more detail:

(1) Dell knows that most customers are not especially technically competent, which allows them to get away with a lot of stuff, like shipping semi-faulty machines, or incorrect presales advice and information. Dell knows that their worse case scenario is to lean on their terms and conditions, and perhaps offer a refund. They only offer refund the monetary cost of the computer however, and cannot refund time or morale.

Insight: By making the time and morale cost super high, most people will never get to the point where they get a refund.

(2) By selling to customers with limited tech competency, they can get away with it by making the burden of acheiving resolution so expensive for the customer that the average person will literally give up. (Someone in my office said she just gave up after three visits and a week on the phone). They literally load the support service with "friction points". You have to be unnaturally determined to deal with them or they will drive you mad.

If Dell can get people to give up, they save money.

Because Dell are a mail order business, it is much easier for them to get away with this.

(3) Keep in mind that, if there is a faulty computer, you have to initiate the support request. There is a shockingly high failure rate in the first year (according to the poll here, over 25% fail in the first year!!!!!)

Dell computers have 25%+ failure rates in first year.

(4) I suspect that, if you ran a survey asking, how many people on this form experienced more minor tech issues with their machine in the first year, it would be *WAY HIGHER*. Most posts on this forum govern these "minor faults or issues".

The tech support team will usually suggest that in order to determine a hardware fault or a "niggle", like the USB3 port crashing, or system latency, or the SD card reader crashing, you have to first reinstall the OS.

Dell tech support said "my computer shipped with a faulty installation of windows". They don't care that there is a HUGE external cost to reinstalling the OS *especially* if you are a power user. If you request less time expensive methods, like shipping a new HD with a perfect install of the OS as a test, they will say to their system as not permitting this. A few months later, a my OS got reinstallted twice in three days, there were still issues.

Poor quality control leads to many minor faults / imperfect machines. Dell know that for many users, re-
installing the OS is such a friction point that users will give up before resolving these, so force people to live with minor faults. Need proof of minor faults? Google "L702x fan noise".

(5) If you seek support, you will meet with a tech support team who are often highly manipulative and know they stand behind a veil of anonymity.

Need proof? Next time you call, before you begin the call, ask for their whole name, email address and dell employee ID. They will usually get evasive tell you that's against poliicies blah blah blah, and maybe put you through to their supervisor. If you argue, sometimes their supervisor will give you their Employee IDs, but not easily. You literally need to be a communications trainer to deal with the frame control / NLP techniques employed by many of their managers. I encourage you all to tell them you are recording their calls and see what happens.

Dell tech support staff hide behind veils of anonymity, allowing them to get away with a lot. They often refuse their employee IDs, and use NLP style techniques to deal with customers. They have lots of practice. It takes 1/2 an hour of arguing to get things escallated, then they don't take action, even if Dell is clearly at fault = FRICTION POINT.

(6) There is a lot of variance in the skills / competency of the tech support team. I think Dell figure they can get away with this low level of quality control because most users are not competent so can't tell.
- After my PC was serviced and the SD card didn't work, the support guy said I had to install all of the WWAN (wireless mobile) device drivers, even though none were in my system, to resolve issues with the SD card (which is totally unrelated hardware). It didn't work.
- They suggested upgrading my i7-2630qm with an i7-2640m. I.e. quad core to dual core. If I was someone of my parents generation who didn't have a clue about processor numbers and specs, I wouldn't have known they were suggesting a downgrade.

More concerningly, I suspect they didn't know themselves.

- When my machine was rebuilt on site & HD replaced, the engineer was supposed to install OS & drivers and leave me with a "perfect machine". He didn't finish job (unknown devices in device managere / 1st generation drivers etc) and when he called Dell, they told him he must move on to next job.

Poor quality control at the system design level PLUS Poor quality control / semi-competency in the tech support team = LOADS OF CUSTOMER TIME WASTED REPEATEDLY and/or NAIVE CUSTOMERS MANIPULATED

(7) Most of the their reps and technical support team will ACT politely (and some are geniunely decent) but the system is set up so that most of the people you can reach have limited power, and seem to work to targets / quotas, with a management pyramid. Customers end up being filtered up this pyramid by Dells system of support, where only great effort and time gets anything escalated, and then they will try to get you to give up. The technical support system plus the people who use it create expensive experences for customers.

They don't take responsibility, or jump over hoops, even when issues are CLEARLY ACKNOWLEDGED as their fault. IF you ask for things to be escalated, they call you, but don't leave a return number or means of contact.

INSIGHT: Dell have SYSTEMICALLY DESIGNED their business to limit limit their financial cost as an absolute priority, REGARDLESS of the cost of customer time or morale EVEN WHEN DELL ADMIT THEY ARE AT FAULT.

INSIGHT: Dell have friction points that dampen efforts to achieve resolution. Their POLICIES PLUS SYSTEM disregard lifestyle of customers. For example, refusing to ship a replacement machine a few days before the original is picked up, so that customer can face minimal downtime.

INSIGHT: Each time there is a problem, customer must jump through similar set of friction riddled hoops. When issues are not resolved, this gets really time expensive.

INSIGHT: Dell manage the productivity of customer service staff by not supplying phone numbers, even though this inhibits productivity for customers.

(8) No one in Dell takes responsibility, even their senior staff in escalations like "Sukanya" who despite what she said, indicated in her responses that she hadn't actually reviewed in detail my case, she refuted the statements of her colleagues, obviously didn't listen to phone records. She suggested that Dell staff only record details of cases that suit them.

If you ask them to put their verbal statements in writing, they will try and wriggle out. Literally, it took 3 weeks and me asking five times (including to Mourin) to get written answers from Sukanya. Her answers demonstrated she hadn't actually reviewed my case in detail and seemed highly political.

INSIGHT: There is a culture of very mixed-integrity in Dell.

(9) If you make a fuss, cases get escalated but only after hours of time have been wasted. Eventually they offer a replacement machine (on a collect and return basis, with a seven day gap of no computer) or a refund (machine collected, last refund took two weeks to process). As part of this, they give no credence to the external costs of dealing with them, no assurance that a replacement machine won't have the same problems, and strictly hide behind their limitations of liability. Even when they have already cost the customer a huge amount of time, they wont go out of their way to help customer.

Dell hide behind their limitations of liability, which forms the basis of "business as they can get away with it".



Conclusion:

"POOR QUALITY CONTROL" x "TIME WASTING, FRICTION RIDDLED CUSTOMER SERVICE" = A HUGE WASTE CUSTOMER TIME.

Consider that there is a 25% failure rate on computers in the first year, and probably over 50% ship with "minor faults" such as some faulty ports, SD card readers with niggles, crazy fan noise, this is a MAJOR ISSUE.

This is really BAD BUSINESS.

This is especially immoral when you consider the part computers play in most peoples productivity and life. A faulty issue riddled computer is like a taxi driver with a car that keeps breaking down. I think this literally exploits many older customers / vulnerable customers.

As someone who often has friends of parents etc who ask me for advice, I find my experience of Dell this time around to be totally obnoxious, because I can do the math, and I know that most people won't get resolution in the above scenarios.

Having been a PC user for 20 years, having owned 10+ Dell

computers personally since 1999, including:

- Latitude CPx,
- Latitude C600
- Latitude C810
- Latitude x200,
- Dell XPS M1710,
- now Dell XPS L702x

And desktops:
- Dimension 4100,
- A few Dell Optiplex GX150s
- Precision 370,
- Dimension 9150

And monitors:
- Dell Ultrasharp 2005FPW, Dell 2407FPW, 4 x Dell 1705FPW

And printer:
- Dell 5100CN

And I have personally been responsible for US $50 - 100,000 of Dell kit being purchased by various companies and colleagues also.

Now I am seriously considering switching to MAC, which for me is like changing religion.

As I type this, the fan on my L702x goes from silent to loud several times a minute in a way that is very distracting. Dell have still not offered any acceptable resolution.


This isn't personal anymore. Now I'm going to do this for all the old / naive / less tech competent computer users, in the hope that Dell change their policies.

If my experience and gist of Dell matches yours, please help me by linking to this post until Dell take responsibility for the issues highlighted. If you have other things you think Dell doesn't want the public to know, please add them in this thread too. Knowledge is power. Maybe collectively we can change something, or at least prevent people from such stressful experiences.

[ejl1980]

1. A survey of 169 not randomly selected, not from the general population, people is NOT in anyway shape or form statistically reliable.

2. The word is naive.

3. Dell is similar to any other company trying to make a profit.

4. Many computer and electronic failures do happen in the first year!


I've had failures on all kinds of computers, ASUS, HP, Dell, etc. Dell has actually been the most responsive company I've encountered. At work the techs show up within 3 hours for critical components and one day for non critical components. I had an Alienware Monitor have a band show up down the middle. I called at 7 PM on a Wednesday, and a new monitor was on my doorstep at 11 AM Thursday. I couldn't believe it. I wish you luck on your email.

[Tsunade_Hime]

I've been personally a Dell customer for 7+ years, and my mom has been with them since at least 1997. We've bought over 12 Dell laptops and 10 desktops, never really had an issue with any inside warranty. Everything is anecdotal. Dells can appear to have high "defect" or "failure" rates because they sell ALOT. Same with HP, etc etc. In fact, Dell support is top notch, they always take care of the customer in the end, and much better than HP or Lenovo in terms of customer service.

[Commander Wolf]

Buy business. I second that Dell business support is best in class. None of this send to partner or depot rubbish. Consumer hardware and support sucks.

[Dell-Bill_B]

@Turbot Sorry to hear about your frustration. I can assure you we don't have a 25% hardware failure rate, as does no manufacturer I'm aware of. Having said that, there is no excuse for poor customer service no matter how you look at it. I apologize for your experience to date. I understand someone from our social media services organization is working with you now. Hopefully we can get things resolved so you can move on in whatever direction you decide to go in the future. Either way, thank you for your support through the years, and I sincerely hope we are able to make things right for you.

[Turbot]

@Turbot Sorry to hear about your frustration. I can assure you we don't have a 25% hardware failure rate, as does no manufacturer I'm aware of. Having said that, there is no excuse for poor customer service no matter how you look at it. I apologize for your experience to date. I understand someone from our social media services organization is working with you now. Hopefully we can get things resolved so you can move on in whatever direction you decide to go in the future. Either way, thank you for your support through the years, and I sincerely hope we are able to make things right for you.
__________________
Follow me on Twitter.
I tweet about Dell and other stuff. @BillatDell
Quickest way to get support from Dell: Twitter via @DellCares or Facebook.com/Dell from the "support" link.

Bill,

On 8 April 2012 (six weeks ago), I sent you a PM on this forum that you did not reply to. I received no reply from you at all, until now.

I am wondering what prompted you to respond to me this time publically, when you didn't respond to me privately six weeks ago?

Buy business. I second that Dell business support is best in class. None of this send to partner or depot rubbish. Consumer hardware and support sucks.

As there is an oft expressed sentiment on this forum that Dell business support is superior to home support, can someone from Dell clarify if Dell has different (internal) policies for home support versus business support?

Also can someone in Dell clarify why Dell so regularly suggest re-installing the OS, citing the OS as the source of issues. In my case, on Friday I was told the only way to resolve issues was to reinstall the OS, even when it had been reinstalled on Thursday by a Dell engineer, after which I spent the rest of my day reloading software onto my PC?

If re-installing windows is so fundamental in Dell's problem resolution process, why doesn't Dell you have a total seperate installation of windows in a different partition of the harddrive, instead of getting customers to wipe their computers and start again to *test* if the issue lies with windows?

[Tsunade_Hime]

All Dell computers have a recovery partition that can be accessed through F8 and Repair My Computer to Dell DataSafe software. If you did a clean OS install and wiped out the partition, then you'll need to use your Dell recovery media.

What Commander Wolf meant by buisness support, Dell's Pro Support has much better support (get a tech in 2 minute or less, US tech support, etc) but of course business/enterprise customers have different support than consumer support, they pay more money for it, more support = more $$$.

[Dell-Bill_B]

Bill,

On 8 April 2012 (six weeks ago), I sent you a PM on this forum that you did not reply to. I received no reply from you at all, until now.

I am wondering what prompted you to respond to me this time publically, when you didn't respond to me privately six weeks ago?

I have 104 unread messages in my PM box. I have set no expectations at any point on replying to PMs here. It's simply not sustainable or scale-able, considering that my role at Dell goes beyond forum interactions. Sorry about that. I wish I had more time to get to all my PMs, but I simply don't. I try my best. This is why I have provided links to get the quickest service from Dell that we provide in my forum signature.

The reason I replied publicly to this particular post is that the agent working your case for the social media team has no "Dell-identifying" credentials on this site, and wanted to make sure someone from Dell replied publicly to let anyone reading your post know we are trying to assist.

Hope this helps to clarify. I'm happy to keep up with your case if you post back here and let me know how it's going.

[thomasw333]

I like the new Dell XPS line, the screens are nice and they seem well built to me. But other than that, myself and people around me have purchased several Dell's and most of them have had lots of problems, I would stay away from all Dell's, unless they are a premium line, like the XPS.

[eleven]

Dude, this is almost novel-length.
I can only imagine the frustration that you have right now! :incrediblehulkmeme:

Although I'm pretty sure they will LOSE more than they SAVE if this is their business plan.

If Dell can get people to give up, they save money.

I would be a hyprocrite if I joined your cause, simple because my after-sales experience was decent to say the least. Not everyone in their support team are blundering baboons.

So take a breather then keep pushing. GL.