The DOBlog

Category: Business

A top level category for posts on business issues such as Web2.0 tools and trends, customer service issues etc.

  • Windows Vista and my new Dell – some thoughts

    Blogging this in some frustration.

    Ordered a new Dell a few weeks back because my previous “Aldi-Special” (a ‘Gericom’ brand) had died.

    As I was going to be sticking the new purchase on the never-never (finance) I decided to pimp my ride a bit and ordered the best spec I could get for the price I’d paid 2 years ago for the venerable Aldi-special. Ever the bastion of customer choice, Dell gave me the option to have either Windows Vista or Windows VISTA, depending on what typeface I preferred.

    Spec I ordered was 2.0ghz dual core centrino processor, 2ghz ram, 256mb graphics and a hard-drive the size of Wyoming. After some kerfuffle with Dell’s systems losing my order somewhere on its way to Finance, the paperwork was processed and the machine shipped.

    First problem – the courier who was delivering the goods point to point decided that, as I wasn’t in, he’d deliver the €1000+ of computer to a neighbour. I wouldn’t have minded that except I had specifically told him NOT to do that as I wanted to inspect the goods when they arrived so I could be sure that there was no problems or anything missing. Courier obviously felt that doing the job he was being paid to do (ensuring that the purchaser of the expensive things actually got them) was too much hassle and dumped them on a neighbour. I found out the next day (a Friday), when after sitting in for the morning I rang the courier to see when he would (as per my instructions) deliver the goods to me.

    Suffice it to say that I was unimpressed.

    Laptop seemed to be working fine for the first few days. Vista is beautiful to work with, in my opinion. But you do need the extra oomph of a good processor and ram and a top notch video card with a chunk of V-Ram (more on that in a mo). I used it last week for a presentation in Dublin – worked fine. Due to commuting it stayed home untouched for most of this week however.

    One thing however niggled almost from Day 1… Roxio software that Dell bundled with the laptop contain a driver (which I assume is a CD rom driver) that Vista blocks as it might make the machine unstable. No driver updates nor patches can be found, even though it seems that a similar driver issue affected Inspiron laptops under XP prior to Christmas.

    Another thing that niggles now is that there appears to be an on-board music critic who decided that my taste in blues/jazz/funk was not suited to this laptop and has managed to switch off the ability of the DVD drive to read any CD media – even the CDROM driver disk that came shipped with the laptop. This kicked in yesterday midway through a listen to a Jools Holland CD my wife got me for my birthday. Also spurned are The Blues Brothers (cheesy but good), Clapton, and Rory Gallagher.

    I decided to go on a trawl of the system to identify where the music critic resided. I uninstalled the DVD drive drivers and rebooted the system (to see if that would evict The Critic). No joy. As my machine rebooted for the second cycle of uninstall/reinstall I noticed that the BIOS was registering my Video RAM at 128MB… “hang on a minute”, said me as I reached for my copy of the order specification attached to my finance agreement, “I ordered 256MB Ram”.

    Now the installed video Ram is not easy to identify by a physical inspection of the machine. Indeed, unless you actually specifically go looking to find the details under the Display Settings of Vista then you’ll never know if you have 128MB or 256MB – not unless you notice a really severe hang on your machine. Certainly it is not something that the technically unaware would automatically think of checking straight away.

    Annnnnnyyyyyhhhhhooooooo…… now I had 3 issues with Dell.

    1. Roxio Drivers not working under Vista (as an Information Quality aside, the error message doesn’t refer to Roxio but to Sonic Systems, who it turns out own Roxio)
    2. DVD no readie de CD – (perhaps this is related to 1 above?)
    3. The sloppy f*ckers hadn’t built my machine to the spec I’d ordered and I probably would never have noticed if the other stuff hadn’t started going wrong

    So today (a Saturday) I tried to use Dell’s on-line Customer Service (because their Consumer Call centre doesn’t work Saturdays.. Why not?). Apparently Dell’s email process into Customer Service doesn’t work on Saturdays either. Nor does the email process to Technical support. Apparently their email system is unavailable. Also Dell’s support doesn’t have VISTA listed as an Operating System on their drop down list… so how do I get support for VISTA?

    Maybe they have a Literary Critic installed who has tired of reading cranky missives in poorly phrased English?

    To summarise:

    1. The Courier failed to meet expectation as he didn’t follow instructions and did not provide me with information as to what he had done with my goods. Given that the evidence of delivery is the signature he captured I could have been left in an awkward position. Couriers are used to ensure delivery to the correct address and person, particularly where the goods are valuable. Otherwise, we’d all just use the post, which is very reliable.
    2. Vista meets expectation – it looks good but has some issues. Hopefully these will shake out as the adoption rate increases
    3. Roxio’s software does not WORK under Vista. Dell should have tested it before bundling it and if there was an issue under XP they should have made sure a patch was available that works under VISTA (the XP patch can’t be installed as it doesn’t recognise Vista as an OS).
    4. The product delivered to me does not meet expectation – Dell’s post-build quality control obviously didn’t catch that the Graphics card installed is not the Graphics Card ordered. Why?

    Of course, I’d tell them that if their email systems were available.

    The brother bought a laptop in Lidl yesterday morning. It has exactly what was on the specification sheet. It differs only slightly in terms of RAM and CPU speed from mine. It was nearly half the price of mine (it uses an AMD processor, I have an Intel). The brother’s laptop has met, if not exceeded his expectations. I’m left fuming on a Saturday because mine falls short of my expectations.

    Lidl or Dell – who has better Quality when it comes to laptops?

  • Amazon-inania update on Michele Neylon’s blog…

    His posted update… http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2006/05/07/amazon-uk-shift-the-goalposts/#comment-7815

    my comment : http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2006/05/07/amazon-uk-shift-the-goalposts/#comment-7818

  • Amazon-inania update

    I used the contact form on the Dept of Enterprise site last night to alert them to the Amazon-inania…

     Here is their response… which includes the email and name of the Private Secretary to the Minister, which I’ve cut out for sake of privacy. If anyone wants them, comment and request (I will not post this information publicly at this time). I’ll ignore the fact that they spelled my name wrong even though all they had to do was cut and paste it.

    Dear Darragh

    Your correspondence has been forwarded to [name witheld by webmaster], Private Secretary to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, T.D. and she will reply directly to you in due course.

    The Private Secretary can be contacted by email at [email address removed by webmaster to avoid spammers – available on request] 

    If you require further information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

    Regards

    [A Civil Servant – name excised for privacy]

    —

    Information Resource Unit

    Aonad Acmhainní Faisnéise

    Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Kildare Street, Dublin 2, Ireland An Roinn Fiontar, Trádála, agus Fostaíochta, Sráid Chill Dara, Baile Átha Cliath 2, Éire

    T: + 353 1 631 2100; LoCall: 1890 220 222

    F: + 353 1 631 2827; www.entemp.ie

    Not sure if this will actually amount to anything, but some follow up contacts via the dept of enterprise website might get someone’s attention…. http://www.entemp.ie/contact/index.htm

     

     

      

     

     

     

     

  • Amazon-inania

    Tuppenceworth directed me to a worrying bit of news – Amazon have gone totally insane.

    Having read the posts and comments over at Michele’s blog, I had to get my writing fingers out.

    Let’s start with the issues in the order they come to me:

    1. The point was made that if you contacted a baker and asked for their cheap bread, they would be entitled to decline your offer of slang-bread for eating-bread on the grounds that they couldn’t reasonably meet your request without additional costs. Amazon don’t make bread. Amazon is an incredible logistics machine with a proven capability to get packages from Dusseldorf to Dublin – as long as you are willing to pay the shipping costs.
    2. There is a quasi-Irish Amazon site – it’s called shopireland.ie and it is run in association with Amazon. Prices are in euro and are quoted at Irish VAT rates. It is very nice. I have used it a lot. (Michele Neylon has informed me that this is an Amazon Associates site – thanks for the clarification.) This is what happened today when I tried to buy from an ostensibly IRISH website. Apparently Ireland is ‘International’ on an Irish site… I wonder if Dermot Ahern knows we’re not in the EU anymore? I wonder how the owners of shopireland.ie feel about their business being impacted by Amazon’s unilateral decision?
    3. Somewhat ironically (as anyone who has read the comment over on Michele’s site) Amazon’s customer service centre is not in the UK but…. in Ireland (Cork), as is their Systems, Networks and Operating Centre (Dublin). So our transactions are being captured (technically speaking) within the jurisdiction of the Irish Republic. But as we don’t live in the Irish Republic anymore we are “International”….
    4. Companies may try to segment their regional markets for a variety of reasons: operational reporting, segmented pricing (ie different prices in different countries). However if they attempt to enforce those prices when a citizen of the EU ‘shops around’ and puts a retailer in a role of ‘passive-seller’ then any attempt to prevent that Retailer from selling to that consumer is an illegal act – either under Free Movement of goods or Competition Law (abuse of a dominant position in Market A to protect/grow Market B).
    5. Warranty issues may be a valid argument – but most of the appliances I’ve bought in recently have either come with warranty information for EVERY EU country or just for the UK (because we speak English and they used to live here we must be English apparently). Therefore, the warranty issue is not as strong an arguement. Also, Caveat Emptor is a defence available to the manufacturer – the buyer would take on the risk of not being covered by a warranty – no reason not to sell it.

    So it looks like we are no longer in the EU because Amazon has decided so. I can see how that might be the case, what with the CIA allegedly using Shannon as a carpark and Airforce 1 and Airforce 2 stopping off for Duty Free every few months. Combine that with a national development plan that has put the car (single occupant preferred) at the centre of transport planning and I’d be forgiven for thinking we were the 52nd State of the US.

    It is either that or Amazon has just bungled into a whopping Information Quality problem. (Well, we do sit between Iran and Iraq at the UN, we’re obviously Middle Eastern).

    Given the impact this has on Irish Consumers, and given that Amazon’s Customer Service call centre is based in Cork, I would suggest letting Eddie Hobbs know…. he can drive down and ask them why they are letting us get ripped off!