The first time I ever bought a laptop was in the spring of 2004, and before committing to a purchase, I spent a lot of time researching to make sure I wouldn’t regret it. At that time, decent laptops cost upwards of $2,000 or more, far different from today where you can pick up a great laptop for $1,000. After all my research, I settled on a Dell Inspiron, and for the most part, was very pleased with it.
If someone at the time asked me why I chose to go with Dell, the answer probably would have been something akin to, “Why not? It’s a Dell!”. In fact, that was pretty much the answer I was given when I asked around for suggestions, because as far as most people were concerned, the Dell name was synonymous with quality, and with a company quite that large, how could you go wrong?
If I do have a sore spot from that purchase, it’s primarily because of Dell’s customer service. No one wants to call up with an issue and have to debate with somebody they don’t understand, but on a couple of occasions – across two LCD fails – that’s the situation I found myself in. These issues didn’t stop me from recommending Dell to others, or even purchasing future products from the company, because I found the benefits of going with Dell outweighed the inconveniences.
Since that purchase, though, Dell has run into a couple of major problems as a company, from financial inaccuracies to known poor customer service to reports of out-right lying to customers with regards to serious component issues. The New York Times covered the latter issue earlier this week, and according to the lawsuit it refers to, Dell was aware that over 10 million PC’s it built between 2003 – 2005 had issues, but didn’t recall them, or even admit to the issue.
Instead, it’s claimed that Dell lied to its customers when the questions arose, or that it would find some other cause to blame it on. In one case, Dell told one larger customer that its operation room was too hot, and that was the result of the failures. In truth, the problem was with faulty capacitors that were used en masse. Of course, Dell didn’t manufacture these, but as the company selling the fully-built PC’s, it undoubtedly had a responsibility to its customers. Instead, it seems that the company did all it could to avoid admitting the issue.
Dell has since spent millions remedying this issue, and states that it’s tackling problems on a case-by-case basis. But with this issue and others that have occurred over the past couple of years, some are wondering if Dell’s lustre has been lost, and if the company could ever recover and rebuild itself to again become the trusted name it once was. Personally, I’m willing to forgive a mistake if the company is willing to prove that things will be improved going forward, but it’s understandable that some people, and especially organizations, would proceed with caution. After all, if a company outright lies about an issue, and even goes as far as to blame you for the problem, how on earth do you ignore that?
The accounting and quality issues aren’t directly related, but they do form a pattern of bad — indeed, terrible — corporate responsibility and governance. As the rest of the industry caught up with Dell’s hype-efficient production and sales models, the company defended its margins by cutting corners. Customer service plummeted. Consumers fumed on hold and were finally routed to less-than-competent help-desk technicians. Even that would have been forgivable if Dell owned up and really fixed the inevitable problems.