Submitted by Liz Hancock
According to its website, “Dell puts you back to work fast.” Many customers discovered that’s not exactly true when their Next Day Service warranties, which had guaranteed a “Next Business Day On-site Response Service,” failed to deliver not only the next day but sometimes weeks or even a year after the supposed next day.
In one story posted on Complaints.com, a home-based business owner hoping for the next day service promised by the warranty, waited all day for the Dell technician to call, only to receive an automated response saying that it would be at least 3-5 business days before the part would even arrive for a technician to make the repairs.
Dating back to 1999, in an open letter to Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer Corp, in the San Francisco Business Times, computer consultant Brad Patten writes of his customer’s experience with the Next Day Service Plan from Dell: “All in all, from the time my customer's new Dell computer broke until he received a functioning replacement, our odyssey lasted 23 next business days. It was an exhausting process for him, for me and for a quite a few people at your company.”
On May 27, 2008, a New York court found Dell guilty of “fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices and abusive debt collection practices in a case brought by the New York attorney general.” The ruling extended beyond the problems with Dell’s promises of Next Day Service: “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 was in trouble once again in January 2009. This time 33 State Attorney Generals settled with Dell for $3.35 million after allegations of deceptive advertising and warranties. From that settlement, $1.5 million was to be paid in restitution to customers harmed by Dell’s warranty and financing practices.
This is not the first time Dell has been criticized for misleading practices. In 1999, the FTC ruled that Dell had “violated federal laws by not adequately displaying cost information.” The ruling did not involve any fines, and a Dell spokesperson said the problems were, "relatively minor and isolated and they were easily addressed." Ten years later, that hardly seems to be the case.
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