an open letter to Michael Dell of Dell Computer

wrote:
Please note that the following letter has been also sent to Dell
Corporate Headquarters via FedEx Priority Overnight, attention Michael
Dell. It was received on 12 December 2005, 7:46 AM and signed for by A.
Little.

Laptop arrived on Tuesday. Dell refunded ~13% of the purchase price
yesterday. They originally wanted to take 15% off a future order, and I
said no.

At the end of the day, I'm not entirely certain Dell has earned back my
confidence (given the amount of time I put into tracking this down, not
to mention the thing being almost an entire month late, I think 25-33%
would have been more appropriate), but when I'm ready to buy another
laptop in nine months or so I'll at least use them as a basis for
comparison.

Anyway--all's well that ends well. Thanks for everybody's suggestions
and help.

Richard

wrote in message
ups.com...
Laptop arrived on Tuesday. Dell refunded ~13% of the purchase price
yesterday. They originally wanted to take 15% off a future order, and I
said no.

At the end of the day, I'm not entirely certain Dell has earned back my
confidence

I tend to agree, if Dell doesn't dispute any of what you wrote in your
original post, they should be making a much more significant gesture of how
sorry they are!

"Joel Kolstad" wrote in message
...
wrote in message
ups.com...
Laptop arrived on Tuesday. Dell refunded ~13% of the purchase price
yesterday. They originally wanted to take 15% off a future order, and I
said no.

At the end of the day, I'm not entirely certain Dell has earned back my
confidence

I tend to agree, if Dell doesn't dispute any of what you wrote in your
original post, they should be making a much more significant gesture of
how sorry they are!



I see both sides, but remember that Dell went significantly under water with
the 13% off. Their margins are in the low single digits.

Tom

Tom Scales wrote:

"Joel Kolstad" wrote in message
...
wrote in message
ups.com...
Laptop arrived on Tuesday. Dell refunded ~13% of the purchase price
yesterday. They originally wanted to take 15% off a future order, and I
said no.

At the end of the day, I'm not entirely certain Dell has earned back my
confidence

I tend to agree, if Dell doesn't dispute any of what you wrote in your
original post, they should be making a much more significant gesture of
how sorry they are!



I see both sides, but remember that Dell went significantly under water with
the 13% off. Their margins are in the low single digits.

Not unlike a good restaurant that, after problems with the food/service/whatever,
comps your meal.

It's a loss, but in the big scheme of things, well worth it.

Notan

"Joel Kolstad" wrote in message
...
wrote in message
ups.com...
Laptop arrived on Tuesday. Dell refunded ~13% of the purchase price
yesterday. They originally wanted to take 15% off a future order, and I
said no.

At the end of the day, I'm not entirely certain Dell has earned back my
confidence

I tend to agree, if Dell doesn't dispute any of what you wrote in your
original post, they should be making a much more significant gesture of
how sorry they are!




Joel -

I dropped out of the latter part of the thread. What made them move, the
certified letter via snail mail or the email? (For future reference)

Glad you finally got it (mostly) straightened out......


Stew

S.Lewis wrote:
I dropped out of the latter part of the thread. What made them move, the
certified letter via snail mail or the email? (For future reference)

It's hard to say. When the Executive Services Team's office finally
gave me a call, it had been a day since the FedEx'd letter arrived, and
then I had been peppering Michael Dell and several executives with
"kill them with kindness"-style e-mails all day, telling them that I've
just filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General, asked my bank
to treat the charge as disputed, informed CNET and the Austin Chronicle
of my problem, and just so they know, if they have any questions for me
about my order they've got my cell phone number and any time that's
good for them is good for me, etc. So I don't know. The woman who
called me made reference to having received "several communications
from you just today", and when I mentioned taking the approach of
trying to be the squeaky wheel getting the grease, she said, "Yes, and
that's worked for you."

Glad you finally got it (mostly) straightened out......

Me, too. Maybe I'll give Toshiba and Sony a look next time.

Richard

wrote:

S.Lewis wrote:
I dropped out of the latter part of the thread. What made them move, the
certified letter via snail mail or the email? (For future reference)

It's hard to say. When the Executive Services Team's office finally
gave me a call, it had been a day since the FedEx'd letter arrived, and
then I had been peppering Michael Dell and several executives with
"kill them with kindness"-style e-mails all day, telling them that I've
just filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General, asked my bank
to treat the charge as disputed, informed CNET and the Austin Chronicle
of my problem, and just so they know, if they have any questions for me
about my order they've got my cell phone number and any time that's
good for them is good for me, etc. So I don't know. The woman who
called me made reference to having received "several communications
from you just today", and when I mentioned taking the approach of
trying to be the squeaky wheel getting the grease, she said, "Yes, and
that's worked for you."

Glad you finally got it (mostly) straightened out......

Me, too. Maybe I'll give Toshiba and Sony a look next time.

If you think things were bad with Dell, wait 'til you experience Sony!

Notan

Tom Scales wrote:
"Joel Kolstad" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
roups.com...

Laptop arrived on Tuesday. Dell refunded ~13% of the purchase price
yesterday. They originally wanted to take 15% off a future order, and I
said no.

At the end of the day, I'm not entirely certain Dell has earned back my
confidence

I tend to agree, if Dell doesn't dispute any of what you wrote in your
original post, they should be making a much more significant gesture of
how sorry they are!




I see both sides, but remember that Dell went significantly under water with
the 13% off. Their margins are in the low single digits.

Tom


If you see both sides, have your view checked ... =. Here is a
compagny who aggravated a customer for over a month, did not apologize
AFAIK and tried to get away by locking this rebate into a future buy.
Nice try but any decent company would have gone out of its way to
compensate the customer (imagine yourself in his shoes, needing a
machine and having to go thru this) and make up for the bad PR. Mistakes
do happen, the difference in the way you make up for them to the
customer is telling.

And do not make my heart bleed over the loss or reduced profit of Dell
he this kind of problem is the price of doing business.

If I needed being convinced of staying away from Dell (and as I said in
other posts, ending up twice unable to get the machine I wanted and
which had ordered was enough), that would have done it.

My concern now is that Lenovo has hired away a bit shot from Dell,
supposedly with a view to achieve the same profit margins with the same
business model. That does not bode well from those who like me now buy
Thinkpads!

--
John Doue

wrote:

S.Lewis wrote:
I dropped out of the latter part of the thread. What made them move, the
certified letter via snail mail or the email? (For future reference)

It's hard to say. When the Executive Services Team's office finally
gave me a call, it had been a day since the FedEx'd letter arrived, and
then I had been peppering Michael Dell and several executives with
"kill them with kindness"-style e-mails all day, telling them that I've
just filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General, asked my bank
to treat the charge as disputed, informed CNET and the Austin Chronicle
of my problem, and just so they know, if they have any questions for me
about my order they've got my cell phone number and any time that's
good for them is good for me, etc. So I don't know.

When I had problems, they seemed to start resolving after I CCed every
marketing address I could find with my problem discussions. Often when the
customer service department doesn't know what to do, the marketing
department can help them see the light

Gerhard

Notan wrote:
If you think things were bad with Dell, wait 'til you experience Sony!

Who might you suggest these days?

Richard