Actually, it's even worse than that. Dell has been found guilty of "fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices and abusive debt collection practices in a case brought by the New York attorney general," reports IDG News.
Dell and affiliate Dell Financial Services also advertised special no-interest financing, but denied almost everyone those terms. It often sold customers products without informing them that they didn't qualify for the special financing terms and then charged them interest rates as high as 30 percent, the court said. . Dell and DFS also often incorrectly billed people for cancelled orders and for accounts they didn't authorize. The companies then harassed the people for payment, using illegal billing and collection practices, the court said.
The court also found fault with Dell support. For example: "Subscribers to a 'next-day' repair service sometimes waited as long as a year for support, the court found."
It's shameful stuff. Dell hasn't commented but clearly needs to respond in a substantial way.
It would be interesting to know if these problems are restricted to the US operation. We have four Dells at home -- two desktops, two laptops -- and the service was brilliant on the one that went wrong.
The law of large numbers comes into play, of course. Every PC company has a percentage of unhappy customers, and if you're shipping 40 million units a year, a 5% problem rate could lead to two million unhappy customers per year... unless you do a good job of fixing them.
