| William H. Magill on Wed, 29 Jan 2003 12:52:20 -0500 |
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On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 08:22 PM, jeff wrote: Interesting.... I've worked in 2 Dell shops recently. They seemed ok a few years back but lately I'm wondering.... it seems every laptop we purchase develops this odd problem with the keyboard and the cursor jumping around. One desktop series developed bad motherboards shortly after firing them up. It's been pretty well documented both by corporate customers and on a multitude of BBs and magazines -- Dell service went down hill about 2-3 years ago when they began to suffer competition from Compaq and did some massive layoffs. Michael Dell acknowledge the problem in several different interviews and claimed to be "working to resolve the problem." However, the cuts in the service organization were not rescinded nor has the competency of their service recovered. [Assuming of course that the competency previously existed.] And apparently, most recently (past 12-18 months), the fabled manufacturing Quality control has also begun to show some serious signs of fatigue. From what I had seen in the September to December period, Dell had a wide discrepancy between their perceived quality and their actual quality. Managers rate Dell as "high quality" while on the same survey listing extensive "problems" ranging from DOA to infant mortality with their Dell systems. Dell still benefits strongly from the perception that other vendors are "much worse" even though their own performance is less than good, let alone stellar. It's not unlike the reputation which IBM maintains. It's an interesting effect, one which Dell exploits and competitors attempt to overcome. Anyone who has worked in a multi-vendor shop knows that any vendor has good days and bad days; good techs and bad techs. Dell managed to establish a solid reputation which they continue to carry though it may not be warranted while other vendors never achieved the reputation they deserved. As the old saw goes -- Superior technology has never beaten even mediocre marketing.
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