Dell bleeds from its own price cuts

Didn’t Michael Dell once suggest a few years ago that Apple should liquidate the company and give all the money back to the shareholders. That may have been prophetic for this time and this company. Hmm?

It’s interesting how out of the loop I was until I purchased a dell laptop and experienced the nightmare for myself. It’s a frustrating thing to purchase their top of the line computer and after two years with extending the warranty and all “which they offer for older laptops and doesn’t come free”, im told by their “excellent costomer service”, my laptop cannot be serviced.

Thank you dell, I will take my business elsewhere preferably hp or apple.

Dell is pure trash (company & owner). I had a lot of problems with them and it doesn’t matter how much I complained — they never answered me a sole word. I hate this brand and I’m sure their products are made using just scrap, that fails just some days after the warrant time.
I hope they collapse entirely as a business and go the the place they actually belong: the hell…

Dell quality and service is so bad that I promise myself never buy Dell again for the rest of my life. I bought two top of the line Dell two years ago. When things failed Dell customers’ service also ran away just like as Verizon today. These companies have the latest technologies but customers’ service is worst.

Guess what Dell? You will never recover. the world knows that you have crappy products and even worse service. I bought a dell and after the customer service in India wanted ME to fix my own computer even though I had an in home warranty. That was it. Your reputation is so bad that people like myself make it a point to tell EVERYBODY I can to never buy a dell. Thank God for the internet, anyone who buys a dell nowadays is just an idiot.

Dell is no longer the comperter it used to be. The quality is gone , the service has been gone since outsourcing to India. You can no longer ask premium price for junk. Welcome to Packard Bells world

I cannot stand offshore support, especially to India. I cannot understand their dialect and ignorance as they basically read from a script. Keep customer service and technical support in the USA. Would you like a slurpee with that…?

Dell computers have always been a pain to work on or get support for. I have been in the IT industry for over 20 years and DELL was always low on customer support and they didn’t use AMD processors to lower their bottom line. Outsourcing never works. Some problems need someone that can speak and enunciate the english language correctly. A hard lesson to learn.

More over Dell might sell the PCs for lower prices, but their quality is worse than any one else. The MTBF is anywhere from 3 days to 2 years for these to go bad and most cases the lap tops are unusable after 2 years. Hence there are no repeat buyers for Dell equipment. They might attract first time cost sensitive customers but in a Industry where people upgrade their corporate and home PCs on a regular basis, the poor quality does not help sales.

To Roger, College Station, Texas:
Dell no longer sees India as it’s main development center. Almost all of the jobs from Bangalore went to Taiwan and continue to do so from both US and India.

Jakie Mason tells it well & better… but to summarize.

1st I’ll sell (to this guy) with a large profit margin.
2nd. I’ll sell (to another guy)with a small profit margin.
3rd. I’ll sell (yet another)at cost.
4th. I’ll sell (yet another)below cost.
At cost?
Below cost? How do you make any money? Volume.

Dell can’t be a Compaq. That’s what got them gobbled up like a till of the hun. Dell must get back to basics of what consumers want. No longer are consumers wowed by the super-size mentality of hamburgers, much less technology. Computers are out of vogue, even for technology buffs in this economy. There is not much to offer these days to bring customers back. This requires focusing on their core customers.. find out what they want and deliver better than hp. Price can only get you so far… today consumers don’t value anything traditional, old and tired…

What happened to Hillary Clinton?
Her message didn’t sell with a majority of democrats. Hmm… might there be a larger message in business as well?

I enjoy Dell products, All of them! I have bought many over the years. My only complaint is thier Support services. Outsourced or not they are truley bad, enough that I gave up on the products, when my laptop, pc or tv go out, or get outdated, I will go look elsewhere. There are plenty of startup incountry-companies here that I can get my vices from. I have concluded that while our wages go down and CEOs and their club members go up. I will not support them anymore. the bottom line should not be the dollar and should be the employee.

If more people knew how to just buy the parts online and put it all together themselves, Dell and many of the others would have been out of business years ago. In a couple of hours (once the parts are delivered ), I can easily build a standard to high-end desktop myself and save hundreds over a Dell. The place where I would need Dell is with a specialty computer, like a laptop or touchscreen, or with bulk orders for businesses/schools/etc. I would suggest that they start focusing more on that area since more and more people are becoming hardware-savvy, especially kids.

Sony’s PlayStation is in the same boat; selling but not making a profit. Don’t know if Dell is losing money per se with each purchase, but they can’t continue this practice forever. At some point they will need to take steps to see more profits roll in.

I spend Dollars not Rupees enough said…

I tried to order a DELL online and i had to wait 4 weeks to get one….

i cancelled cus i cant wait 4 weeks if i can buy one in the store the same day…
i can imagin where they were cutting costs….

I have used tech support for software from India and found that one problem they have is culture clash. I understood what was going on because I have worked with Indian people who came to this country as young adults and understand some of what they mean. They grew up in a social system that not only has classes of people but those who are treated much as slaves were in this country a little over a hundred years ago. The Indian people we interact with are usually upper class individuals who have the money to go to school and do things. They just normally treat others as lower class people because others are in their society. It makes Americans angry and the people in India have no idea why.
If Dell really wants to sell more they should switch from selling a full system to a modular system much as old fashioned stereo components were sold. An external increased memory module allowing for an upgrade to the system might be placed along side an external hard drive all linked by USB cables to the box containing the motherboard. Why should a computer system be static not allowing spending more money until it becomes obsolete and buying a replacement can be justified?

tt’s comments intrigue me…sounds like he’s middle-management at Dell in Austin:-)

I like the fact that Mikey D is tightening the reins on financial sharing…I think it’s gotten out of hand over the past 10-15 years…Let’s see if Wall Street feels the same way…Doubtful:-)

In order to increase Dell’s reputation the company must work truly hard. Today’s world is very different from the world that was ten years ago. Every day competing to Dell companies are being started. They offer better services, good prices, and they have large potential and motivation.

In my view, it will be hard to Dell to recover after this decline. There are many other successful companies in this industry with better reputation.

Dell’s products were at one time well supported. Now you get routed to India and have to deal with those frustrations on even the most simple of tasks. As stated, computers are commodities–now stated, customer service is not a commodity. Bring back customer service that has command of the language of its consumers and you may see this one turn around. If given the option I would pay more for support if it was US based.

Their lack of customer support, once they make the sale that is, is killing Dell. I have no plans to ever buy another Dell product again after my recent 4-day experience with their technical support staff. Wake up, Corporate America! You cannot outsource your customer and technical support staff off-shore and expect to retain life-long U.S. customers. Your off-shore support does not care, or they have been trained not to care, about the U.S. consumer.

The turn around Michael Dell is promising is basically to outsource everything…

You can’t imagine how low the moral of Dell employees these days.

High level guys are concerned theywill get axed, so they are witholding all information from the mid level. Mid level dunno what to do. No directions in the compaeny.

Good Luck

PCs are commodity products these days. There is no product differentiation for consumers and businesses aren’t interested in replacing their old pcs. DELL’s only hope are emerging markets.

Dell says the love is back? How about some specific examples. What has done to bring the love back? I bought a bunch of their PC’s for my business back in 2003. Had problems with several of them. Gave up or didn’t even try to get problems fixed because tech support in Asia was a utter nightmare.

Then this past Spring, someone from Dell reached out to me to see what they could do. Their investigation ended with no satisfaction because I did not have any service records to back up my problems.

What a perfect business model. Sell defective computers, then make customer service so bad that people won’t even try calling to get resolution, then blame it on the customer for not trying hard enough to get the problems solved.

I certainly feel no love for Dell.

Ah… the magic of Ron Garriques… First Motorola RAZR… now Dell PCs… This guy should not be allowed to sell “market share #1 at all cost” philosophy to anyone…
Is Mike Dell so blind accepting this guy to his company??

Stands to reason they are losing sales, if you compare the XPS One(all-in-one) to the one HP offers, you get twice as much of ram, etc for less money and get touch screen as well. If you compare any of the pc’s offered by Dell to another brand name, Dell’s prices are way off the wall. I am in the market for a new PC and so far I’ve have picked HP for my next brand because price comparision, they offer far better specs.

Dell will never recover completely from all the stupid decisions they have made over the last ten years. Bringing Michael Dell back is like bringing the founder of Starbucks back! Once your brand is tarnished, its almost impossible to regain your former glory! Things change and better companies are being started every day, fortunately!

It’s good! Dell cuts PC prices. However, even after price reduction company’s stock prices going down.They will probably change their tactic soon.

Michael Dell has been hocking cheap computers under this flawed business model for years. I’m only surprised that it took this long for his awful tactics to finally affect profits.

What is really interesting about Dell’s price cuts it is that the company tried to stimulate profits by reducing the prices. But their strategy didn’t work out.