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$4,000 laser mouse
Simply a coincidence, or payback from scorned employees?

Maybe it's a coincidence, but Dell's recent round of layoffs seems to have sparked a flurry of price mistakes on Dell.com. According to the Wall Street Journal, Dell has plans to lay off 16 percent of its 4,500 strong workforce in Malaysia -- that means that 700 people will be out of a job by the end of June 2010.

Interestingly enough, around the same time the layoffs were announced, numerous price mistakes started hitting Dell's website. Deals site Slickdeals was the first to notice the steady stream of price mistakes with one of the more popular finds being a 3.2GHz dual-core Xeon 5060 processor for a mere $10.99. Other popular pricing errors included a Xeon E3110 (3GHz) for $16.99, a Xeon E5450 (3GHz) for $39.99, and a Xeon L5430 (2.66GHz) for $12.99.

While extremely low-priced processors were being snapped up by people looking to make a quick flip on eBay -- in the slim chance that the orders actually go through -- there are other price mistakes that aren't such hot deals. A 120GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive for a Dell Studio 1735 is listed at a whopping $21,000 while a laser mouse is going for a cool $4,000. Another humorous addition is an Inspiron AC adapter for $710.

Dell may be laying off 700 employees, but it seems as though its remaining employees will be working overtime to flag the thousands of orders that have likely been processed for the ultra-cheap Xeons.

Now we can't be sure that the two events are related, but something smells fishy for sure at Dell today.


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Dell service quality is
By sviola on 12/17/2009 7:15:29 AM , Rating: 5
I don´t know what is going on inside Dell, but they sure need to get their act together. They used to have great customer service (which led me to buy some stuff from them in the past few years) but lately, their services are terrible. And I have experience on this:

Last month, I bought a XPS m1340, for my wife, so she would have a light, but powerful notebook so she could work on her thesis and since then, it´s been a nightmare. First they gave me a 15 business day timeframe for delivery (which I already think is over the top, to deliver a machine, which all they have to do is set up the image and send it through mail). Then, for my surprise, 2 weeks later, they changed the delivery for 30 business days without giving me notice. Then, after complaining and discussing with their staff, they cancelled my order (without notice as well), placed a new one and had no delivery date. When I called, they said it would take another 30 business days (which would mean a february delivery).

Now, taking 2 months to deliver a notebook is unbelievable. What makes me even mored pissed, is that I went to an electronics shop this week and the same notebook was available there for purchase and go. So, I called them again and asked to cancel the purchase, which they did, but cancelling the debt on the CC takes 20 business days. Unfreaking unbelievable...So, in the end I got no notebook, no money to buy another one (which will probably be a Sony or HP) and a lawsuit against Dell (as here in BRazil our consumer protection laws punish this kind of thing, but you need to go through the courts to have it effective).

So, here is my advice: DON´T BUY DELL!!




RE: Dell service quality is
By frobizzle on 12/17/2009 9:05:45 AM , Rating: 4
Dell has always been little more than a steaming, festering, puddle of maggot-infested horse manure. I'm surprised it took you this long to figure that out!


RE: Dell service quality is
By Ristogod on 12/17/09, Rating: 0
RE: Dell service quality is
By jonmcc33 on 12/17/2009 10:55:06 AM , Rating: 4
HP would be a close second. Their print driver packages are garbage now and their customer service is the worst, worse than Dell from my experience.


RE: Dell service quality is
By Chadder007 on 12/17/2009 8:52:54 PM , Rating: 1
Whose customer support doesn't suck now?
People are getting what they paid for by wanting cheaper and cheaper systems and letting the companies get away with outsourcing all of the support.


RE: Dell service quality is
By Motoman on 12/18/2009 10:18:51 AM , Rating: 5
It's not that consumers are letting big companies "get away with" poor customer support. It's that consumers are unwilling to pay more for a product from a company that provides good customer support.

The mindset of the consumer has become to buy a given product for the cheapest price possible, ignoring any ramification that may come with that.

...which is fine, in as much as it is what it is, but then you need to stop bitching about companies with bad support, or having lost your job to an overseas worker, because it's consumer behavior that punishes companies into the lowest possible price bracket all the time.


RE: Dell service quality is
By plowak on 12/18/2009 5:10:52 PM , Rating: 3
Excellent service from HP: returned a laptop for repair and the turnaround time was one day - excluding two days each way for shipping on their dime. Got back on Dec 16.


RE: Dell service quality is
By Lerianis on 12/22/2009 5:54:29 AM , Rating: 2
Well, with printer drivers... yeah, HP is BAD AS HELL.... with other stuff, they are pretty good.

Their desktops and laptops are pretty good when it comes down to it.... I have one 5 year+ old desktop that is still going strong, though I had to have the motherboard replaced recently by HP because when the power supply failed, it fried the motherboard somehow!


RE: Dell service quality is
By callmeroy on 12/22/2009 9:55:04 AM , Rating: 2
Thank you for pointing out HP's drivers -- I'm glad someone else confirms they are crap besides just me.

I love the HUGE file size for a stupid driver to just get a stinking printer to print a damn document. Or the stupid graphical nature of the UI and how it takes 300 years for the printer to install.

What ever happened to the "old" days of you just download a driver to your hard drive and install it locally in about 5 minutes and BAM..your printer is up and running.

BTW...customer service is crap EVERYWHERE today --- across all industries....hell around here merchants don't even say thank you that often.


RE: Dell service quality is
By sinful on 12/23/2009 2:28:02 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
HP would be a close second. Their print driver packages are garbage now and their customer service is the worst, worse than Dell from my experience.



HP's print drivers are horrific; drivers for their "All-in-one" printers are even WORSE.

What's sad is that they used to be OK, but now they're just junk. Installing a printer/scanner should not take 30 minutes while the drivers try to "detect" the printer.

And once installed, good luck at actually having anything scan correctly, without it crashing/not detecting the printer, etc.

Oh, but hey, at least it tells you your toner is at 67.5% every 30 seconds... and oh look, it tells me when I printed something! Thanks! I wouldn't have guessed that it would print something when I told it to print! It's like a big announcement... "hey, it WORKED this time!"
LOL


RE: Dell service quality is
By messyunkempt on 12/17/2009 10:25:48 AM , Rating: 2
Definately. I've had nothing but trouble from them in all my dealings with them. The response from me and a collegue when 30 dells turned up for us to install, 'ermmm ok, so when are the COMPUTERS turning up?'. We then proceded to make a small fort out of the boxes just to make sure we actually got some value out of the purchase.


RE: Dell service quality is
By Chernobyl68 on 12/17/2009 12:15:07 PM , Rating: 2
Not true. Back in the 90's they were the ones to beat. But its been all downhill from there.


RE: Dell service quality is
By noxipoo on 12/17/2009 1:07:51 PM , Rating: 2
i only deal with their enterprise/server groups and i have no complaints. always talk to an american and they are knowledgeable.


By InsaneScientist on 12/17/2009 1:53:00 PM , Rating: 2
Ditto here. Not an issue in the Enterprise, Small Business, or Education spaces. :)

However, I haven't ever bought anything from their consumer division, so I can't speak to that part...


RE: Dell service quality is
By jonmcc33 on 12/17/2009 2:55:59 PM , Rating: 2
I got a DCSE and FastTrack account through my last company. No need to talk to anyone. Just pick the parts for replacement and they are there the next day.


RE: Dell service quality is
By T2k on 12/22/09, Rating: 0
RE: Dell service quality is
By Belard on 12/17/2009 2:29:20 PM , Rating: 2
Thats pretty bad... in the USA, its usually 15~30 days to get a Dell computer from their website.

But yeah, Dell does suck here too. When my clients need a notebook, I order ThinkPads from Lenovo. I don't know how good Lenovo is where you are, but you may want to check them out.

I've ordered 6 Thinkpads in 2 years. Each time, the system says "15" days for delivery... once, "30 days" because it was the new ThinkPad T400s. But in every order - typical delivery has been 7~9 days, including the T400s!

So check them out.


RE: Dell service quality is
By Golgatha on 12/17/2009 3:39:07 PM , Rating: 4
Lenovo - From placing the order, to getting it to my house...10 days. They also imaged it with Vista instead of Win7, but they sent an overnight box without me asking to have it sent in and reimaged. They also provided a free 1 year warranty extension for my time and trouble. Finally, they are sending the reimaging software to me free of charge so I can restore the Win7 image myself in the future if I need to.


RE: Dell service quality is
By Enigmatic on 12/18/2009 11:49:40 PM , Rating: 3
One bad experience = DON'T BUY DELL

Systematic reviews on customer service are what counts, but I can't seem to find one unfortunately. For example: I've shopped at Newegg a bunch of times and have had only positive experiences with UPS. But search UPS sucks, UPS horror stories, Purolator > UPS, etc. into Google and obviously a million people will say otherwise.

Anecdote is pointless, I am astonished that more people don't seem to consider this.


By inperfectdarkness on 12/19/2009 10:34:00 AM , Rating: 2
sager FTMFW


Humorous?
By omglol on 12/17/2009 6:26:48 AM , Rating: 5
"humorous addition is an Inspiron AC adapter for $710."

What's funny? That seems like the regular price for a laptop AC adapter on an OEM site.




RE: Humorous?
By Proteusza on 12/17/2009 6:45:41 AM , Rating: 5
They should do what Monster Cable does, and claim that the AC adapter is made from gold made by the only alchemist who was ever able to transmute base metals into gold, and is thus superior gold, except that for some reason it resembles copper. And its plastic casing is made from ethically sourced plastic from sustainable, green sources that plant a tree in their native region for every kilogram of plastic produced. And it reduces your laptop charge time by 1%.

Works for Monster.


RE: Humorous?
By therealnickdanger on 12/17/2009 7:17:12 AM , Rating: 5
I heard that Monster cable even cures cancer and AIDS.


RE: Humorous?
By marvdmartian on 12/17/2009 8:13:40 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah, but can they beat the notorious Chuck Norris? ;)

Monster Cable.....all the cable, 10x the price!


RE: Humorous?
By BruceLeet on 12/19/2009 1:37:00 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer, too bad he never cries. :[


RE: Humorous?
By Ytsejamer1 on 12/18/2009 10:21:28 AM , Rating: 2
I totally should open a store right next to best buy and just carry HDMI cables for $20-$30 (still making a 10000% profit). I'd make a killing.


RE: Humorous?
By Inkjammer on 12/17/2009 9:57:05 AM , Rating: 5
"... the only mouse of its class built with the finest Dwarven Mithril."


RE: Humorous?
By Spookster on 12/17/2009 12:10:55 PM , Rating: 4
Using Adamantite for the mouse would be better with Black dragonhide used to wrap the cord.

Quickly....Run...Escape!!!!


RE: Humorous?
By Golgatha on 12/17/2009 3:32:11 PM , Rating: 4
Admantine Black Dragon Tail Mouse of Slaying FTW!!


They probably got rid of someone they shouldn't have
By dgingeri on 12/17/2009 7:22:16 AM , Rating: 3
I'd say this is likely caused by someone giving a job to someone who didn't deserve it. Likely, a particularly lazy, stupid person replaced someone who did their job well.

Managers who lay off good people and keep stupid, lazy people in the interest of saving money get what they deserve.




By tastyratz on 12/17/2009 8:38:28 AM , Rating: 2
OR

They could have just fired someone and pissed them off...

Hmm yea, I think that's it.

I must say though the Irony is quite amusing when you think of it. Just think, if dell honors half of these price mistakes it will be a huge profit loss.... probably equal to a hundred more jobs.


By jdietz on 12/17/2009 8:52:09 AM , Rating: 2
They will not honor any price mistake.


By LordanSS on 12/17/2009 2:23:11 PM , Rating: 2
I'm not sure how the consumer protection laws are in the US, but had that mistake been made in Dell's website here in Brazil, by law, they are forced to go honor the orders made.

If any company advertises a product/service in a way/price in here, law mandates that they deliver it. In here, Unlimited internet is that - unlimited, no buts, no throttling. If a store's print (broadcast or internet-based) advertisement shows a CPU at 10 Reals, that's it too.

For all the really bad things and stupid laws we have here, regarding so many different things... one thing I can't complain is our customer protection ones. They are indeed quite good.


By nafhan on 12/17/2009 9:36:54 AM , Rating: 2
Based on the number of mistakes listed in the article, I'm going to go with "someone did this on purpose". One maybe two things could be an accident, but the number of expensive things selling for low prices and inexpensive things for rediculously high prices, plus the timing, really points to malicious action on the part of a soon to be former employee. I'd hate to think they would give someone a pink slip and let them keep access to update the site, so maybe the spouse/relative/friend of someone who lost their job?


By Mitch101 on 12/17/2009 11:28:52 AM , Rating: 5
Dell has Government contracts maybe the $4000 mouse is the Government discounted mouse and people are going to the wrong site? ;)




Dell Orders
By btc909 on 12/17/2009 2:09:15 PM , Rating: 2
I ordered Left 4 Dead 2 from Dell on 11/23 & come to find out the estimated delivery date is 12/15. I called on 12/4 & after being on hold for 45 minutes was told the game shipped on 12/1. Today is 12/17, do I have the game well yes. Only because I bought it from Gamestop 2 weeks ago.
Dell site still doesn't show a tracking number. Do you think I believe the game shipped on 12/1, hell no.

HP, the printer driver bundles are GARBAGE. Want to slow a system down loaded wih TSR's, get an HP. But if you haven't looked at a Canon I would highly recommend you do.




RE: Dell Orders
By Golgatha on 12/17/2009 3:34:06 PM , Rating: 3
Funny thing is I tried to cancel my order by email after they updated my estimated delivery date to something like 12/14 for L4D2, and it shipped the same day they responded to my email (about 10 days ago) saying it had already shipped and the order couldn't be canceled.


I wonder
By MonkeyPaw on 12/17/2009 7:37:28 AM , Rating: 2
I don't doubt that Dell will not honor the items that are a ridiculously underpriced. What I do wonder is what Dell would do if someone actually bought one of the items that's way overpriced?




RE: I wonder
By Denithor on 12/17/2009 9:51:29 AM , Rating: 2
Ship you exactly what you ordered and grin all the way to the bank.


.
By StevoLincolnite on 12/17/2009 6:51:05 AM , Rating: 2
Bugger! I wish I knew about this earlier!

I also noticed that the "Cheap" stuff on Dells website has disappeared, but the uber expensive gear remains.

I could have done with a new Xeon for 10 smacko's.




Dell Quality is Definitely Down
By tech329 on 12/17/2009 8:23:00 AM , Rating: 2
I know someone who in the last three weeks bought an XPS 435/9000. Nice hardware but the software is a complete mess. The only remedy was to do a clean install from the Win 7 DVD. A complete restore from the factory image ended up with things not working. A native install of Win 7 without any of the Dell support stuff or other vendor software works pefectly. Dell support was useless. I did this for a neighbor who was more than a little upset but was glad there was actually nothing really wrong with the system. Dell is definitely in trouble.




Slickdeals FTW
By HakonPCA on 12/17/2009 11:19:03 AM , Rating: 2
As a slickdeals . net regular, I noticed a 500GB hard drive for $1.99 and ordered a couple heh, sometimes if you order overnight you can get them shipped before they notice the problem.

Love me some DT and some slickdeals




I was a Dell Technician
By TheEinstein on 12/18/2009 7:56:33 AM , Rating: 2
Please do not shoot me til you read the story!

I was a technician via a contracting company for the Dimension line. We were also overflow for all other lines as well.

I was a typical computer user when I started, went through the course, became a typical geek user who could fix most things, and by the end of the year I was the tech you wish you could reach on the first call.

It was good work for low tech wages (The place had the nickname Stream U... as in University) but great learning opportunities. They had HP, Dell and many other tech related companies as contracts so you could go around and get the full range of skills while (quietly) getting your degrees via fast track.

But in 2001 they shipped the Dell tech support to India.

For 3 years I was able to get enough customers to barely survive (I am a bad advertiser) based upon one common theme "They never fix anything anymore!"

Customers would call, get told to replace the OS, and then all is fixed. It would be the hard-drive. Or they replaced the Hard-drive three times, and it was the RAM. It was really stupid to hire script monkeys to read the scripts of possible errors. (No racism, just elitism from this post, please I do not accept racism ever!)

I would call up after getting the contract, walk the 'enemy script reader' through his script by telling him the steps one by one before he could say anything, tell him what his script tells him to say, then tell him why it was wrong and what part was really needed.

Invariably they would wonder 'how do you know so much?' and I would say "I wrote the damned script you are reading, and the revision, but the revision was refused by stupid executives" (Of course I never wrote the scripts, but I would write revisions frequently, including some that ended up being hot-fix methods for new issues). Needless to say they always sent the proper part when I said that.

Dell has been dropping downhill since the introduction of Windows Millennium by MSoft. They rushed to make hard-ware in record times and threw it all together with a crap OS to take advantage of hype. They went downhill from then on.




hmm
By sirius4k on 12/18/2009 9:32:28 AM , Rating: 2
Bought a Latitude.
Used it for three days.
Harddrive died.
Sent lap to service where it was for three weeks.

But, unlike you people, I had no problem with customer support =)
I will stick




LOL!!
By blueboy09 on 12/19/2009 2:20:36 PM , Rating: 2
Serves them right! I know I'm going to get flamed to death, but Dell hasn't got their act together for quite some time, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if some employees of Dell did this. As the old saying goes: What goes around comes around. - BLUEBOY




Well in America...
By SSDMaster on 12/21/2009 6:16:21 PM , Rating: 2
In America Dell is great. Anywhere else you should probably go with HP or build your own computer (duh). You can even build your own laptop (kinda) with OCZ now right?




Dell Customer Service
By yottabit on 12/22/2009 9:34:20 PM , Rating: 2
I have to disagree about Dell's customer service with some of you, I have a Dell Studio 1535 laptop I bought at Staples and after a couple weeks of use the screen died (this may have been my fault, the my laptop bag took a flying leap against the car door when I cornered a bit too hard a couple days before).

Staples didn't give a crap because it was a couple days over the 14 day return period, so I contacted Dell. The next day I had a shipping box to put my laptop in and I think I had my laptop back with a new screen within a few days. It was a pain talking to various random people and convincing them it wasn't a software problem, but that's a minor inconvenience to getting my laptop back up and running in days.

Their extended warranty prices are very reasonable also (they quoted me something like $90 for 3 years coverage of everything except the battery, including accidental).




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