Normally, I think that Dell machines are pretty good machines. People beat down on them because they have had a bad experience. When you make as many items as they do, you’re bound to make a bad one now and again.
Unfortunately, today, my workstation at work stopped working. I tore it open and found that all the capacitors on the motherboard were either bulging or had begun leaking. (hint: that’s bad.) So, I go to the Dell site and check on the warranty… Nope. Out of warranty. What’s more, this is the second of three of this particular model that have done this very same thing. And it seems to be fairly common with this model of main board.
And you can’t tell me that Dell didn’t know about this fault. But the cost to replace them all was greater than the cost to replace only the ones that went bad during the warranty period. That’s sucky. If this were my home pc, I would be unable to do just about anything. Luckily, it’s a work pc, so I’ve got a spare or two that I can use until I get a new motherboard. (thank you eBay.)
So, Dell is on my list today. That’s bad business even if it is technically “good business”.
UPDATE: As you can see in the comments, someone from Dell happened upon this post. My thanks go out to him for making an exception and sending me a couple of replacement boards. It’s certainly better business, but great business would have to recognized the problem and sent replacements at the beginning.
About Shane Ede
The problem I have with Dell machines is that they generally ship with no spare slots.
I often get asked to update graphics cards, install RAM etc for people (I’m not sure why people think I can do this stuff, I do websites and SEO for a living, I guess they just think something along the lines of “Stu does something with computers, he’ll be able to fix it”), and I don’t even bother to open up Dell boxes anymore. I’s usually either a propretary part, or it’s soldered onto the motherboard.
You want to be really sure you know what you want when you buy Dell, ‘coz once you’ve got it, that’s pretty much it.
Well they had a bad rap for a while because they had a period where their growth outstripped their supply, so ended shipping quite a few machines with substandard parts.
It crops up again from time to time. (*cough* motherboard *cough*) Overall, I have found HP to be more reliable, but neither has been perfect I suppose. All that being said, dell does *tend* to be the better bang for your buck.
My name is Brad and I work at Dell headquarters in Round Rock, TX. I would like to look into the problem with the motherboard further and see if there is anything that can be done. Please contact me back at my email address and I will help you in any way that I can.
Brad
Dell Customer Advocate
Dell will actually help you with this problem usually if you call them. I think you are just assuming they won’t help because it is out of warranty. I do understand the concern though, and have definitely seen my fair share of complaints about Dell.
yeah dell do get some bad press on the internet. like you say, with big success comes criticism. same with any product/service.
That’s a great customer service story. Three thumbs up to Dell!