Dell Hell – a slight return

It was announced yesterday that Dell are cutting 100 jobs in Ireland. Hmmmm…

Dell is a company in trouble that is desperately trying to reinvent itself. However, my experience is that Dell is a company that is also deluding itself and incurring potentially large amounts of avoidable costs through poor management of processes and poor information quality.

Regular site visitors may remember my “Dell Hell” posts. I haven’t posted much on this recently, which may give the impression that this issue has been resolved.

Has it f**k. 5 months after I took delivery of the laptop Dell still have not completed manufacturing it to the specification I ordered. I am dealing with a single named person in Dell at this stage. 4 weeks ago I spoke to her and she undertook to send an other graphics card to me. She then emailed confirmation that she had done this to my work email address (which I’d specifically asked not be used).

4 weeks (and 2 emails from me) later I haven’t had an acknowledgement or confirmation that anything is happening and I still don’t have the laptop I ordered and am paying for. This is NOT rocket science but Dell can’t get it right.

To date I estimate that on a €1500 laptop Dell have spent the best part of €1000 to not fix my problem and continue to piss me off. If we assume that the laptop cost Dell €1000 to assemble & sell in the first place (assumes a 10% markup on the ex-VAT price) then Dell have LOST €500 (50% of cost of sales) on me as a customer.

50% of cost of sales. That’s a lot isn’t it. And all as a result of poor quality information and poor quality process management.

For my part I’ve gotten a few articles out of this and a few blog posts…

Articles:

Silver linings I have… all they’re seeing in Dell right now are clouds.

50% of cost of sales… f**k me – if I had a business doing that badly I’d fold my tent and bugger off as well.

+++Update+++
Via The Register I found this story about Dell’s new moves to reinvent itself. Reading down through it I found the following quote. Apparently Dell…

“..expect to ship customers a complete product. We’re not going to finish off products at customer sites with our services business.”

Whaddefook? Why then am I still waiting for a techie to come and finish building my consumer Inspiron laptop (at my premises)? I would have expected that it would have been built to spec in the factory…

2 thoughts on “Dell Hell – a slight return”

  1. John here, customer advocate at Dell headquarters in Texas.

    Whether or not I agree with your assessment that we’re somehow deluding ourselves, what bothered me most about your post is that you’re still dealing with an unresolved issue 5 full months after it started. This isn’t the norm, and it isn’t the kind of service we strive to give our customers. Though I’m halfway around the world in Round Rock, I would be happy to coordinate with a colleague in Europe to make sure that this problem gets resolved once and for all.

    Feel free to send me an email including any case numbers you may now have, and I would be happy to see what I can do to help.

    John
    Dell Customer Advocate

  2. Daragh O Brien

    John,

    Thanks for chipping in. I’ve already dealt with another of your Customer Advocate colleagues a while back. Over the weekend I’ll dig out the relevant case number and the contact information for the named person I’m dealing with in Dell Ireland and send them on to you.

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