Dell Knew About Battery Problems for Years

As everyone is aware, Dell has recalled over 4.1 million batteries in it’s laptops because some of these batteries have caught on fire. But an article on Consumeraffairs.com says that Dell knew about the problem for over two years. A former technician from Dell says the company recieved hundreds of laptops that were melted or burnt because of the defective battery. The technicain, Robert Day, says he downloaded hundreds of photos and shared them with Consumeraffiars.com, though I did not see any posted on the site. Mr Day said he left Dell and went to work for Apple after reporting a Dell executive in a sex scandal.

These batteries were made by Sony and were placed in some models of Dell’s Latitude, Inspiron, XTS and precision mobile workstation notebooks that were shipped between April 1, 2004, and July 18 of this year.

He said after Dell started using the Sony batteries in 2003, the PSI started receiving so many charred laptops that Day’s lab, located next to the PSI, had to store many of the laptops.

Day said he didn’t know how many charred laptops Dell received as a result of the batteries, but said it was, “in the hundreds.”

Day sent ConsumerAffairs.Com over 300 photographs of about 100 different laptops. It appears that about 12 of those melted laptops were the result of the battery while the rest were from various other electrical shorts and CPU fan failures. He said there were many more battery-burned laptops than that, but he only had access to one technician’s archives.

Day now works as a technician for Apple and said he left Dell after he turned in a Dell executive involved in a sex scandal. Dell did not return two phone calls. Source: ConsumerAffairs.com

Some of the possible side affects of this recall is that airline regulators may ban laptops from planes.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Current Events, Dell No Comments » August 2006

Hot & Live Customer Support

Sorry, saw that on the Vnunet site and couldn’t resist using it as my title.

Apparently Dell shares something with a porn site. It’s name. One2One is the name of Dell’s new blog, it is hosted at one2one.dell.com, but customers who just remember the one2one part may be in for a surprise. One2One.com is a porn site. Hehe, don’t you hate when you think you find a great name for something and after you name it, you find something similar? Donna Bogatin, a blogger at ZDnet, found the website just that way.

Here is another Dell blogging faux-pas: lack of domain research.

Having read my fellow bloggers’ straight forward, objective analyses of the Dell entry into the blogosphere, I nevertheless wanted to judge the Dell blogging effort for myself. Rembering the blog name referred to in the numerous unimpassioned blog posts, I navigated to one2one.com.

I knew that Dell promised “real people,” eager to listen.

Contrary to my expectation of arriving at a staid, boring corporate shell, however, aiming to put forth “corporate speak,” I was greeted by a very “live action” experience featuring “online babes” eager to chat.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Dell No Comments » July 2006

Dell Adresses Customer Service Issues

In the latest post at the new Dell blog, Laura Bosworth, Director - WW Customer Experience explains how Dell is changing processes to reduce hold times, make returns easier, addressing pricing concerns and how they are investing over $100 million to fix it. Outstanding. Even Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine is impressed.

Now that’s more like it. I have no idea whether their efforts will be successful; that elephant is mighty smelly. But they are finally addressing the real issue they should be facing in a conversation with their customers. And in the comments, the customers start right in with specific complaints. I’ll be eager to see how they’re addressed

In the rush to get their blogs in the limelight, bloggers everywhere said they’re not doing enough, they need to do this, they need to do that, well, they are and they are trying to make it better it seems. Only time will tell, and I’m sure we’ll hear about it if it stays like it is, but, as it usually goes, you never hear the good stuff, so there probably won’t be too many mentions of it. When I hear about it, or experience it myself, I will make note either way.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Dell No Comments » July 2006

Dell is Already Listening

Was on Scobles site and saw this article, Four little links say volumes at Dell site about the latest post on Dell’s new blog.

I think we should institute a two-week moratorium against saying anything bad about a new corporate blog. Dell already shows that they understand the power of a link. Their post this morning tells me it’s not old-school “push a message out” time but that they are watching and learning.

I agree Robert, it is going to be tough enough for them to maintain this blog from all the haters that hit some of these sites, let alone other bloggers dogging them from the start. They don’t have to control the conversation, but once they start adding to it, like in their latest post, it will start leaning their way more and more.

Yesterday was the first official day of Dell’s one2one weblog and already Jeff Jarvis and Steve Rubel were kind enough to tell us what we’re doing wrong. Thanks for the feedback, guys. We’ll keep working to get it right.

Shel Holtz weighed in a bit more constructively. Our intention with this blog is to address issues that are important to our customers. Give us some time and we’ll prove it. Robert Scoble told us to listen, and to link to the folks who don’t like us. First step was to launch Dell’s one2one. Check. We’re excited to be here, and we welcome your ideas.

Here is a quote from Holtz, who I agree with completely,

Time for a deep breath. The blog’s authors are real people serving as human touch points for customers, and given a bit of time to find its footing, one2one could very well be exactly what Jarvis, Rubel and the other critics believe it should be. But blogs do need time to find their voice—especially group blogs—and corporations don’t move at the same light speed as individual bloggers and evangelist agencies. Is there no slack to be cut among the superior early adopters who have already figured things out?

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Dell No Comments » July 2006

Dell Launches one2one

Dell is finally joining the blogging world, can you believe it? I can’t. Wonder why the big change now, did they finally get a consultant in there who knows about the power of blogging and the “conversation” everyone can have, with or without Dell? It’s called one2one and it looks like it was inspired by Channel 9, of Scobleizer fame, and they say so in their about page.

What is Scoble’s take?

What did I tell Nestle when someone asked “how do you start?”

Listen. Listen. Listen. Er. Technorati. Technorati. Technorati.

Link to your enemies. It takes away their karmic power.

I told Quixtar to link to everyone who says that Quixtar sucks. There are QUITE A FEW!

Why do that? Well, it takes away our power to poke at your negative spots if you openly admit them. That turns throwing rocks through your front window into a boring exercise.

It’s never to early to focus on what they should be doing and most people believe they should be talking about all their bad stuff right away, such as the laptop catching on fire or the Dell Hell website, Jeff Jarvis and the famous Buzz Machine website. Who says,

It’s a blog in content management system name only.

The subtitle is “direct conversations with Dell” but this is as much a conversation as yelling at a brick wall. There is not one link there. It’s filled with promotions for Dell’s wonderfulness. The top post today from the global director of e-commerce, Manish Mehta, saying:

It is hard for me to believe that it has been 10 years for www.dell.com.

Yes, I think I spent about 10 years on old with you guys.

Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion says,

More importantly, Dell really failed to get the blog going the way that they could have. This was a golden opportunity for the company. They could use the blog to engage the community in a genuine conversation on the critical issues that have dogged them for years now as well as the good things they are doing. (Recent pictures of a Dell computer blowing up at a conference in Japan were recently the rage in the blogosphere and now the media.) However, they chose not to.

I say give them a break, it’s been up for what 6 days? Only God works that fast. They can’t fix everything that is wrong with them in a week, but this is a giant step forward for them, let’s see how it turns out.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Dell 2 Comments » July 2006