Open letter to Michael Dell

Open letter to Michael Dell

Dear Michael,

Here is an offer you can't refuse. Each year your company spends millions to consultants, who tell you things you already know, or things so plain simple that you can just ask your customers. I offer some free advice, so you can save some money, you know, get some waste out of the system, and return more added value to your customers.

Did you write the following, or is this consultancy spinning? "We are listening to and partnering with our customers everyday."

I am such a customer. I have had Dells at work for many years. The machines are not insanely great, but they do quite well what they're supposed to do, albeit a bit slow.

I had my own private Dell, a tower, which hasn't survived the ages. Then I had an XPS laptop, which died at a rather early age.
So I went shopping for a compact desktop, which I couldn't find. So I settled for a rather compact Tower, again. I thought about an offer from a colleague to buy a home made PC, assembled from off the shelf components, which would be a third cheaper. I decided to trust a Big Brand.

When the package came, I noticed immediately that there was something wrong with the hard drive - it made an intolerable noise. The contact with the helpdesk was not a nice experience.

I returned the PC, and when I got it back, the hard drive was fixed, but the pre-installed software was gone. Not that that mattered so much, it was mostly useless stuff, I only missed one and a half year of free antivirus protection. I wrote a mail to complain about the issue, but got no answer back.

I thought I'd better use some heavier artillery - I threatened to cancel my purchase, for which I have a legal right. Still no reply. Your employees must have guessed I was bluffing. It had taken me quite some weeks to get my PC working, and returning the Dell would mean to have to start the process over again from scratch. Which I didn't want to do. So I installed some free antivirus software and didn't care about the free goodies.

Now my Dell is working fine. Its fast, and the screen is great. What I miss is a USB port and an audio jack on the screen. What I really hate on Dells is that you have to get on your knees to connect a USB stick or a headphone. The ports are actually , recessed about an inch which I think is silly, they should be on the same plane or even protrude, to make it easy to find the port.

Michael,
you know better than I that there is no such thing as a free lunch. My advice is, of course, not totally free. It's a cry from a customer hoping to be heard, de profundis. I hope that I get, in return for my free offer, a listening ear. I'm too realistic to get a response, though.