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Dell Gets a Failing Grade in School | 40 comments (40 topical) | Post A Comment
Not the experience we have had...[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#4)
by Anonymous User on Mon Oct 09, 2006 at 08:42:59 AM PDT

I work for a school district, as part of a small IT department. As a department, we support approximately 500-700 Dell computers (this includes workstations, servers, and laptops).

While I agree that Dell's temporary outsourcing of business-level phone support was at one time abysmal, to put it mildly (the resulting backlash led them to move business-based support back to the US), I have not had the overall problems that the above poster has had. As long as we have had US-based phone support, the problems we do have are fixed very expeditiously. I get parts within 24 hours of problem diagnosis, they are shipped overnight.

I would be interested to know the models of Dell computers the original poster purchased. It is known that several models (primarily produced a few years back) had leaking capacitor issues on their mainboards, the result of the capacitor manufacturer, not Dell. Dell has quickly replaced the mainboards on the few machines we have had that experienced this problem.

By the way, if you are a technology coordinator, it is your JOB to troubleshoot; that is why your school district pays you. Nobody's quality control is perfect. Admittedly, the defect rate appears high for you, but if I said "I don't have time" to troubleshoot the kind of problem you're experiencing, I wouldn't have a job for long. Doesn't seem like a lot of work to go into Dell Diagnostics and run the unattended tests on those two machines, allowing you to walk away and do other work while the units diagnose themselves

P.S. I have also found that many school districts cheaped out on the support end by not purchasing gold-level support from Dell. While standard support works adequately, gold-level support offers reduced phone-queue times and higher-level technicians.

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Torn[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#7)
by foxyshadis1 on Mon Oct 09, 2006 at 08:15:40 PM PDT

I can't speak for the submitter, but as a one-person IT Department for a mid-sized company I know the pain of being spread between a dozen major and minor problems all the time, with more propping up as old ones get fixed. If it's not an immediate priority it goes in the closet until an hour or two shows up, by which time you've forgotten, and when you do remember there is no time. I've been guilty of sitting on something that would irritate me, like this, at times as well.

Oddly enough, software bugtracking your life makes adminning saner.

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Failing Dell Computers[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#33)
by Anonymous User on Tue Oct 24, 2006 at 06:40:03 PM PDT

As the poster of the original comment about Dell, I know that one aspect of my job is troubleshoot, which I gladly do. But I resent having to troubleshoot brand new or almost brand new computers. In the first place, as our network has grown, I am swamped with serious problems and the usual time-wasters like the teachers and counselors that forget their password, for which I provide assistance. When we receive a product that is defective, how do you figure that part of my job is to use my personal cell phone and run some basic frontline troubleshooting for Dell?

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Dell Gets a Failing Grade in School | 40 comments (40 topical) | Post A Comment
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