Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Dell Hell - Semi European Edition

Recent figures out of the UK point to a serious setback for Dell in Europe and the UK with computer shipments dropping a whopping %22.1 which is not only a shock to Dell pundits but a shame as well... Acer shipments were up %31.6 in the same period, market leader HP up %1.2, Toshiba and Asus reporting %20.3 and %43.4 respectively.

Yikes.

For a company whose core talent was (and I say was) selling good, cheap computers to the masses they don't seem to be doing so well.

One of the UK's most widely read papers The Telegraph recently published a scathing blog that starts off "Poor, schizophrenic Dell..." and then goes on to relate the familiar story of dell hell and the patronizing nightmare of "DELLA" which is apparently some dell website for women. If it's put up by the same talking heads from direct2dell I can well imagine...

Double Yikes.

In another article outlining the mess@dell.com along with the usual description of said mess there are suggestions on potential fixes. The FIRST on the list of things to fix is... you guessed it CUSTOMER SERVICE... hello Talking Heads? This is a sad state of affairs 4 yrs PJJ (post Jeff Jarvis)

Triple Yikes.

And the New York Times reports on a customer service study that shows Dell with a 58% rating which qualifies as Very Poor... no surprise there. Apple got top billing with 80%... no surprise there either.

Quadruple Yikes

I don't know the word for the 5th yikes (fifthuple???) and I am too busy shaking my head over the sad state of affairs in Round Rock to go on so I will leave it there.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The Cost of Doing Business@Dell.com

I was torn over what to call this particular post and what style it should appear in, like Dell itself, we have multiple choices here at Dell Hell Revisited... should I go with a traditional "By the Numbers" or should I go for the more obscure style of "...@dell.com"

Well, it's best served warm so here it is without further debate on style or content... a small example of the cost of doing business with Dell.

North Carolina offered Dell somewhere in the area of $280 million in incentives to set up a plant there. Part of the deal was 1700 jobs by 2010. After two recent rounds of layoffs, the plant now employs about 1140 and Dell isn't saying when or if it will ever employ the 1700 required to justify the incentive. Do the math folks, even if Dell filled the 1700 jobs that is still a VERY generous incentive. Let me save you the trouble of pulling out the calculator, it is $164,705.00 PER JOB. At the current 1140 it is a staggering $245,614.00 per job...

Hands up who COULDN'T create a job for yourself if the Government gave you $245,000.00 to start up... or to buy yourself some job related education... or maybe you are a local farmer who wants to transition from tobacco to edible crops?

If I lived in North Carolina I would be pissed at Dell and just as pissed at my local Government.

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Monday, May 4, 2009

Happy 25th to DellHell

Thats right folks, 25 yrs of dellhell as of this month... One can only presume that Micheal learned much about computers in those years, and indeed things have come a long way since the days of PC's LTD, the legendary company Dell founded in his college dorm.

Sadly, he seems to have learned nothing in those same years, in regards to customer service. The long line at the gates of DellHell will attest to that.

"...Fortunately, the XT is still under warranty, so all I had to do was call Dell and have them replace the digitizer. That took several phone calls, running diagnostics over the phone, etc. I had one support rep tell me that my Latitude XT was not a real PC. I had another rep tell me that the diagnostics was taking too long to run, so I needed to call them back when it was finished..."

Well, not so bad you think... wait, there is more... dell sends it back untouched and unrepaired, he sends it back to dell a second time, they fix it but keep 2 of the 3 GB of ram he had in the machine... and now he has had enough...

"...Dell, your technical support and repair facility has been an utter fail and has left me being one very disappointed Dell customer. This latest mishap, coupled with my overall experience with the Latitude XT, has me looking at anything but Dell when it comes to buying new systems for myself and my small business clients."

In other news...

Dell gets sued yet again...
"Dell sued by city of New Orleans over crime cameras"

The company tanks in the first quarter of the year...
"Why the Big Dip at Dell in the First Quarter?"

Dell is not getting messages on their mobile phone
“...a non-compelling product with a roadmap that lags competition.”

Dell gets a failing grade...
"Dell basically flunked with a “poor” 58% rating overall and a “very poor” 47% in enjoyability."

And that's just a taste of what it's been like in dell hell lately....enjoy!

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