Dell's Dirty Dealings and Plummeting Share Value

So after a brief hiatus while I spent some time at the Olympics and then relocated to a place best left unmentioned due to it's utter lack of charm or other redeeming qualities, I happened to google Dell news today and lo and behold, what do I find?

Here is a quote from Money.CNN

"From 2003 to 2005, Dell sold computers with faulty capacitors that allegedly caused most motherboards on two Dell Optiplex models to break, rendering the computers useless. Dell was aware of the issue, according to recently unsealed court documents from a pending lawsuit, yet continued to sell the computers anyway.

Though the juiciest details are still sealed by the court, several internal company e-mails show that Dell instructed its sales staff to downplay the malfunctions to customers.

"We need to avoid all language indicating the [mother]boards were bad or had 'issues,'" Jeff DilLullo, a Dell sales manager, wrote in a March 2004 e-mail.

One December 2004 e-mail shows that the company was hiding the reason for and severity of the crashes from its customers.

END QUOTE

Hey Lionel Menchacha... if you are still working for these dirtbags I would love to hear from you... how do you spin this on Direct2Dell? (BTW Lionel, You can respond here, I don't follow Direct2Dell anymore, no point.)

Here is a quote for you Lionel, from one of your own bean counters at Dell and it says exactly what I was telling you was the reason you swines wouldn't fix my daughters computer even though you know darn well it was a turkey...

"we open ourselves up to a flood of customers wanting whole system replacements -- which would be disastrous."

Another quote from the same article indicates that this sort of behavior is not unusual at Dell...

QUOTE
"Dell recently set aside $100 million for a settlement it is negotiating with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a bundle of fraud charges stemming from years of accounting violations. An internal Dell investigation, completed in 2007, found that company officials improperly manipulated Dell's reserve accounts -- such as those set aside to cover product warranty claims -- to hide earnings shortfalls.
END QUOTE

Not just A fraud charge... a BUNDLE of fraud charges... who would have guessed?

Spokesman David Frink, when asked about the issue of the faulty computers had this to say "old news."

Well maybe so, but did he notice in the last few weeks that Dell's share price has plummeted %26? It has been obvious for years that Dell no longer gives a damn about it's consumer customers, and PC sales to the consumer market have responded by dropping dell down the list of world leaders in PC sales year after year... but now with a bitter taste in their mouths resulting from fraud convictions and a very questionable set of customer service values, will Dell's corporate customers go the same way?

Let's hope so, Dell has earned it!