Dell and Wal-mart
It maybe old news that Dell is going to sell their PC`s at Wal-mart stores all across the nation. Its also old news that Dell is having financial issues.
I am or I should say – I Was; a long time Dell fan. They had exemplary customer support. Their products were rock solid and built with good hardware plus the servers were very Linux compatible 🙂 What the heck happened? A few months ago I bought a Dell M90, the specs looked great, it was exactly what I needed. A friend of mine also bought one at the same time.
Previous to the M90`s we both had Inspirons. We had them for 3 years and treated them ok, but being on the road a lot takes its toll on them. But they never let us down, never did I have to call Dell Support for anything!
What can I say about the M90`s ? OH DEAR! comes to mind, I have gone through a power supply, hard drive. My friend has also gone through a power supply and a wireless card, it looks like his LCD is set to go as well. I also have complaints about their
servers and just a year ago they were producing quality machines. What happened?
Since they where in such a financial state did they decide to cut back on good components for their products?
Surely not, that would be suicide right?? Especially in the tech industry, right?
Did they decide to neglect the rigorous testing that they based a whole advertising campaign upon? Maybe. Truth be told, something is up, something that your average Wal-Mart customer won’t give a damn about, as long as they can browse the Internet, listen to streaming country music and e-mail a 20 meg picture of their tractor pulling equipment (Stereotypical Wal-mart ‘guests’?) 🙂
Don’t think I am being a brand snob, I feel that Dell is a good brand gone bad and its a shame, the other leaders like HP, Acer etc are not any better. I have to admit it folks, this laptop is going to be sold off if I have anymore issues with it and the purchase of a Mac Pro will be on the horizion.
Dell, please concentrate on your product quality, don’t let it keep sliding to the point where Jethro cant send out his pics of the tractor pull!! What is this world coming to?? Get some venture capital for crying out load, its worth it to keep the brand alive!
Psymon from Sigmundvoid.com
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Recent Comments
Ask The Admin 
July 26, 2007 at 4:10 am
Crazy how QA is always on of the first signs of a faltering situation for a company.
July 26, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Yeah, its a sad state of affairs, seems like Walmart is where all the good`ol companies go to pasture:)
July 27, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Psymon, I just wanted to drop by to add some perspective to your post. Sorry to hear that you and your friend have experienced component failures with the M90. I hope we can agree that such failures can and do occur from time to time with anyone’s products. Your posts implies that there are pervasive problems with this product and Dell products in general. I can assure you that this is not the case. The M90 has had very positive reviews from both media and customers. While we are not perfect, we do take quality and product testing very seriously and, along with an emphasis on things like more innovative features, more distinctive industrial designs and developing more ways to purchase and communicate with us, it is integral to our turnaround strategy. We can only hope that this experience will not overshadow your positive history with Dell.
July 27, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Thanks Marco we appreciate you stopping by I also have noticed issues on machines we have purchased recently as well. We had a relatively new machine about 1 year and 1 month old. Its ac adapter started sparking and according to dell it had snaped in its snaping point – and because it was out of warranty we would have to buy a new one.
Dont you think if you know this is the snapping point you would make it stronger or at least honor the warranty that was a few weeks over?
I have had dell latitudes for 4+ years and they took beatings and never had these types of issues.
I have been hearing it from my users that the wear and tear on the laptops cause a lot more issues recently (last 12 months) more than ever before.
I have not had ANY issues with servers but we have had a few high end dimesions with bad motherboards in the last batch – 6 out of 100.
@Marco from Dell
We never had those issues before either.
We would love an opportunity to review your products going forward and would be very open minded. Let us know if you are interested and you can shoot me an email @ karlgee at optonline dot net
July 27, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Mister Dell Guy I have noticed sliding quality on the new dell purchases my company had made within the last 6 months as well. We used to love you guys now we are hesitating on our next big purchase. We have been looking @ new vendors per my manager. Uggg Gateways are ugly
July 27, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Marco,
Firstly, thanks for actually giving a darn and submitting a comment.
As you can see its not just me who has had issues with Dell. I still purchase Dell servers, 5 every month roughly, but I do hear about issues with them, yet I do have brand loyalty, or I would not be spending my clients money on Dell products.
The article I posted was ment to be humorous one, but on the same token serious, I do believe every company has bad times, if it wasnt for these times how would they learn to improve themselves or recognise their mistakes?
The M90 laptop is a good machine, but the problems I have had and my partner have had do kind of scare me off buying another Dell precision workstation.
I am not saying that you cant have a bad batch once and a while, but two laptops bought at different times?
Marco, you do have my brand loyalty, I will still be buying Dell servers, but
there is only a certain amount of loyalty I can have, if clients servers have issues, common ones to them, I will have to change.
Again though Marco, thanks!
July 27, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Appreciate all of your comments. We are the first admit we’ve made mistakes in the past and we’re focused fixing them and doing what’s best for our customers. We’ve invested heavily in quality and customer satisfaction recently and while we know the transformation will not happen overnight, we believe it’s a step in the right direction. We’re committed to keeping the lines of communication open and we’ll continue to listen and learn from our customers.
Karl, happy to discuss reviews of Dell products. I’ll shoot you an email soon.
Psymon, thanks for raising the issue. I am happy to hear that loyalty is keeping you as a customer, however we hope to prove that we are worthy of your business through our actions.
Thanks again to all of you for your comments!
July 27, 2007 at 9:24 pm
This definitely shows that Dell cares, to say the least. I’m willing to listen to what they have to say. I’ve had mixed experiences with Dell products. On Both ends of the scale. Had an inspiron a while back that seemed cursed, and after many hours on the phone with Dell, they sent me a new one that was exactly the opposite. It worked years without any issues. I guess maybe Dell’s problem might be consistency. Though i can’t say they weren’t willing to listen – their customer service has been fairly consistent over the years. I can clearly remember myself thinking about Thinkpads (no pun intended). Though I might have some loyalty left over for dells, they do make some good servers.
July 27, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Marco, good to see that a company of your size admits to its mistakes, that by itself is a good sign of “Doing the right thing”
Oh if you want us to review one of your Ubuntu based system that would be wonderful:)
Seriously though, thanks again, its good to see Dell are getting out there and finding out what people think of their products.
July 28, 2007 at 1:26 pm
We have been buying dell since their inception and as with any company some products are a hit and some flop. We love the new precisions and have not experienced any real hardware issues. are there others with these issues?
Psymon101 after all those replacements how is it going? Is performance as good as I heard? Do you know what the max memory is on the M90?ty ttyl!
July 31, 2007 at 11:43 pm
i would love you to review new ubuntu dell lappie