Jeff Jarvis had a problem with his Dell computer. Dell’s customer service did a terrible job of responding to him. He documented the whole affair here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. (I may have missed one or more installments in the saga, and no doubt there will be more to come.) The latest coda is contained in a letter that Jeff wrote to a VP at Dell:
This machine is a lemon. Your at-home and complete care service is a fraud. Your customer service is appalling. Your product is dreadful. Your brand is mud.
Good for Jeff. He had a horrible experience with Dell’s customer service operation, like so many others, and he decided to document it in a very public place. But I’m not writing today to trash Dell. Instead, I’m writing to express my disgust with the response that Jeff’s series of rants got from other people who have high-traffic Web sites that are run by popular content-management systems (blogs, I think they’re called). These folks seem to think that because Jeff is semi-famous and gets quoted a lot on other Web sites and occasionally has his face on TV to talk about these blog things, he’s entitled to special treatment.
There’s no doubt that Jeff’s high Google juice will result in lots of people reading about his experience. When they do, they’ll get an accurate picture of how broken Dell’s customer service is and how their Complete Care guarantee doesn’t deliver on its promises. And Jeff understands what this means for Dell:
I could have stayed on the phone for hours and gone up a tier at a time playing the customer having a psycho fit (ask anyone who has heard me go after customer service people who don’t serve: I play the role well).
Instead, I chose to write about the saga here. I chose to elicit the sympathy and conspiracy of fellow pissed-off Dell customers. I chose to see whether Dell is listening.
They are not.
Their media people were not reading the media that matters — media written by their very own customers. This page is already No. 5 in Google under Dell sucks. I gave them time. They failed.
Give Jeff credit for recognizing that it’s the comments on his post that matter, not his isolated experience. But his compatriots missed that message.
Jason Calacanis, for instance, says Dell should have a new rule. Treat bloggers really well:
My advice to Dell? Send Jarvis a new machine (you should have done this a while ago) while you figure out what is wrong with the product. The reply to him ON HIS BLOG with an apology, explanation of why there was a breakdown, and permission to show him how good your service can be by making his in house service free.
Dell should look at Jarvis going off on them as FREE CONSULTING. Jarvis is a highly-paid consultant—be thankful you got his services for free!
Scoble says Dell misses chance to make influential happy:
If you aren’t listening to the new word-of-mouth network you’ll miss opportunities like this to make influentials happy.
Steve Rubel writes:
If I worked in Round Rock I would have my best tech on a plane to Jeff’s house New Jersey tomorrow. This is inexcusable behavior given that Jeff Jarvis is an A-lister.
What a crock of shit.
In the world that these guys inhabit, people with high-traffic Web sites get special treatment because they’re “influential” and “A-listers” and “highly paid consultants.” Would Steve Rubel advise the clients of his PR agency to give preferential treatment to high-profile customers so that those customers can then write in glowing terms about the service they received, even when that service is not representative of what an ordinary customer will get? That doesn’t seem honest or ethical.
These “A-listers” also assume that the problem never existed until one of them wrote about it. News flash, boys: There’s a site called Dell Hell that pops up in the #1 slot when you run a Google search for that term. That site includes a link to this entry I wrote back in November 2004, and this follow-up. There’s a serious problem with power supply failures on Dell Dimension 4600 models, and I continue to get comments from other victims every week. A little more Googling would have turned up my Memo to Dell CEO Kevin Rollins from later that month and a follow-up post from December 2004, which includes a link to yet another post called Dell Hell, on a Web site run by yet another tech-savvy Dell customer who had a bad experience. But Jeff Prosise and I aren’t A-listers, so I guess this doesn’t matter.
Google Dell customer service problems and you get 2,950,000 hits, with titles like “My unbelievable experiences with Dell” and “How bad is Dell support? A lot!” and “If you have problems, expect no assistance from Dell” all on the first page of results. (And Jeff, if you had done that search before you made the purchase, maybe you wouldn’t have bought from Dell.)
My point is that there is already plenty of evidence available to anyone who knows how to use Google that Dell’s customer service sucks, to put it mildly. Granting special treatment to so-called A-listers only convinces me that A is for arrogant.
Jason, the rule for Dell should be “Treat customers really well.” If a customer happens to be a blogger, fine, but having your own blog shouldn’t be your prerequisite to special treatment.
Robert, how should Microsoft respond when it finds out that a product or process is broken? Should your company give special treatment to “influentials” and ignore the underlying problem? Or should it communicate with that influential to thank them for pointing out the systemic problem and then fix that problem?
Steve, sending a tech to Jeff Jarvis’s house fixes Jeff’s problem. It doesn’t fix Dell’s problem, and it leaves all those millions of other customers out there in Dell Hell.
You guys need to stop going to conferences with other A-listers and start paying attention to real people. And I assume that I won’t be invited to the next get-together of A-listers, either. Which is just fine with me.
Ed Bott 
Wow. Great post. But I can’t figure out who you are “piss-est” at. Is it Dell, because their CS is crap and you’ve beat your head against it for a long time? Is it the “A-listers” because they’re advocating special treatment for their own? Or is it because you don’t consider yourself an “a-lister”? Shoot, one of them actually pointed me to your blog and I’ve been enjoying it ever since!
Loved the post! This is what makes public “content-management systems” so awesome!
Ed,
Great post! I totally agree with you. I can’t believe the attitude of some bloggers I used to have respect for.
Ed:
Great post – one which echoes some concerns that have been brewing in my own mind for some time now. I have come to know Scoble well and Steve Rubel on a virtual basis. In conversations with some of my closest blog buddies over the past couple of months, we’ve frequently remarked that the notoriety and influence these two (and other A-listers) have developed can be used well or poorly. Increasingly, I see the same signs of insularity and elitism creeping into their once-populist voices you discuss in your post.
It’s a pity really because they’re both very sincere and passionate guys. But they’re obviously not immune to “rock star” syndrome and their newfound popularity and credibility is in danger of being compromised by their isolation from the ideas they once championed. It strikes me, even as I write those words, how short a period of time has transpired since most of us started blogging (Scoble is the exception – he was one of the earliest champions of the medium).
I do agree with two of Jason’s thoughts though (disclaimer: I write for a number of his Weblogs, Inc. network of blogs). I think it would be a great move on Dell’s part to join Jarvis’s conversation by publicly replying in the comments on his blog and they should learn from the lessons Jeff is tying to impart to them.
He’s made the point a few times in his Dell Hell threads that he is fully aware of his bully pulpit and how he’s using it in this situation but, unlike the special treatment Scoble and Rubel suggest is the right way to address his complaints, he’s clearly trying to get what he paid for and feels he has not received. He is building a conversation with his readers and it’s a damn shame no one at Dell is smart enough to join in.
Finally, I agree with you completely that it was a huge ommission for all of these A-listers to act as though there was no history behind this situation. All of them preach about the power of the net to build a repository of shared information. It’s disappointing that none of them thought to do some research (in Jeff’s case before buying from Dell in the first place and for the others in looking into and referencing the back story).
Why are you critisizing Michael Dell, who is an American hero, on Independence Day weekend?
You sound like a whiny America-hating Democrat.
Your support of Microsoft is excellent though, I don’t understand the contradiction.
Ed, I agree that bloggers (and journalists in general) shouldn’t get special treatment, nor expect such.
But I think the point that many of these folks are making is not that they should be treated well, but that Dell should be savvy enough to be keeping an eye on what’s being said about the company online. There’s no evidence of that out there that I can see. Those who seem to advocate better treatment are perhaps skipping a step in their narrative — that Dell should at least SEE the fire and, logically, make attempts to put it out . . . or do something, anything.
Steve Rubel’s mantra is that companies should blog and be aware of the blogosphere. He probably felt he didn’t need to say that in this case; he jumped to the end result, from points A to C, which makes it seem like he’s advocating special treatment. What he’s advocating is that Dell be aware and be smart about their public relations, which they don’t appear to be.
Dell’s been in this situation for a long time. Whenever you talk to their execs, they always calmly say they are either a.) aware of issues and we’re taking steps to fix them, or b.) we’ve taken steps and they are getting better now.
But it’s not getting better. It seems to be getting worse. And what’s even worse — and what’s typical of a company that gets too big — is that Dell isn’t aware of it, and has gotten defensive about it. When it comes to customer service, that can be a death spiral.
First, I too wonder why you would buy a brand computer rather than either build your own or have the tech shop down the street build one for you. (When it breaks, take it down the street and have THEM keep it until it’s fixed. Then you sidestep all the negative energy spent with a company like Dell, Gateway, HP, Apple, whomever.)
Second, one thing EdBott.com has made clear over the history of his blog is that with search engines how all blogs are equal. The significant difference is among those who do the research and post interesting, factual, and thought-provoking content on their blogs as opposed to most myself included who use a blog as a journal or as a tool to merely opine. I presumed the former is considered an A-lister, but “Survey says!” it’s the latter.
Finally, I won’t write anything on my blog I don’t also share with the company or developer, and I’m constantly surprised at how many contact me for further feedback, negative or postive. Jeff, Steve, Jason, et al. are attacking the symptom, not correcting the underlying problem, as Ed suggests. Good customer service manifests itself not in treating “A-listers” differently, but getting Dell to fix problem systems. Since that doesn’t appear to be happening, nor is it causing Dell stock or sales to drop, your best action is to refrain from buying a Dell product the next time.
Who would trust a local shop to build a laptop (which is what this guy bought from Dell, not a desktop)?
Laptops are such delicate things when it comes to heat and weight. I rather go with a company who has experience building them.
What Dell did here though was idiotic.
Dwight, the quotes that I posted from these three blogs specifically say that A-listers and influentials should get different treatment than regular customers. Your interpretation is charitable, but not IMO accurate.
Dwight – I have to agree with Ed here. It’s the special treatment aspect that’s most worrisome. FWIW, Steve did his first podcast last night and directly addresses the concerns Ed (and those of us in the peanut gallery here) are expressing. I think his heart is in the right place and he understands the reasons Ed wrote what he did.
I agree that bloggers on whatever list shouldn’t be treated differently. But if Dell were smart, it would use blogs as an opportunity to see what customers are saying … and to fix problems (and get good PR for it)… and to learn about their own products and service…
Dell has people clipping media services to see what Walt Mossberg is saying and, yes, Walt is influential, but he’s not a consumer; he’s a reporter.
On blogs, Dell would find its consumers… including the many thousands who are pissed at Dell. That should teach them something. But it won’t if they won’t listen.
Note that Steve Rubel went back and updated his post in response to some of the criticism:
I’ll stand by what I said. Writers — particularly if they work without an editor to draw things out of them — often address things in shorthand, presuming readers know the backstory or their overall mantra. I think in most cases that’s what happened here — but I WILL allow that too often tech writers get special treatment and some actively seek and expect it. That’s just plain wrong.
Ed, it looks to me like you’re conflating several different kinds of reaction into just one conclusion: that A-list bloggers should get special treatment. You responded to Dwight that each of the quotes from the blogs you mentioned all say that influential bloggers should get special treatment. But that’s not quite the case.
Jeff’s comment: “Their media people were not reading the media that matters…this page is already No. 5 in Google under Dell sucks.” This is implicit about him being A-List, but he’s saying Dell should be looking at what Google is saying other people think is important about Dell. That’s a marketing lesson. (You can interpret that as Jeff saying he’s important, but Google is saying that other people link to Jeff.)
Jason’s comment: I agree with you.
Scoble: This is a marketing comment Scoble is making. He’s not per se saying Jeff deserves better treatment. He’s saying that Dell could use someone who has a bully pulpit for marketing purposes by treating them better. Scoble’s comment is directed at Dell about Jeff, not inflating Jeff’s importance.
Rubel: Again, marketing advice.
I won’t engage in talking about A-list bloggers and their behavior. (I score as about a B-plus-list blogger from my Wi-Fi blog, and I get no special privileges, invitations, or other perqs. Just traffic and ad reveue.0
But most of this discussion is about how Dell could better position itself.
As for critizing Jeff because he bought a product from a major brand that dominates the industry–sure, he should have done more research. But goddamn it, it’s not his fault that Dell has apparently betrayed every bit of its commercial obligations to him.
I don’t want Jeff to get special treatment. I want Dell to read the Web and understand their business is going down the toilet.
I don’t own any Dells. I have an eMachines laptop that I love (from Aug. 2003) and two generic PCs (one Windows, one GNU/Linux) that I assembled from parts.
I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I read comments like the one by “red stater”.
And these guys are allowed to vote! 😦
haha u just got totally pwn3d by scoble!!1!
u suck, y dont u try writing software instead of critisizing ppl all the time?
cant be fun leading a pathetic little existence as poodle for the b0rg in a lame attempt to get blog hits.
Oh boy! A 7r0ll! I am now teh l4m3!
Glenn, you are completely missing my point. Dell has been hearing this stuff for at least a year. It’s on their own damn message boards, which are moderated by their own employees. It was on my blog. It was on Chris Pirillo’s blog. It was on Web sites that are not run by trendy content-management systems.
And yet Dell does nothing. It continues to bullshit its customers, as my follow-up post demonstrates.
In your breakdown of my comments, you start by implying that I am critiquing Jeff. Precisely the opposite. I praised Jeff for his approach. He’s doing exactly what I did last year, documenting his complaints. He’s not demanding special treatment. And please note that in his follow-up post he says he agrees completely with me, OK?
You summarize Jason’s reaction as “I agree with you.” Wrong. Jason says “Dell should treat bloggers really well.” Better than average customers? And what about bloggers who were writing about this issue last year and whose posts are readily findable through search engines? The notion that any customer who can include a blogspot.com URL with their complaint deserves better treatment is absurd.
Scoble says “Dell missed a chance to make an influential happy.” No. Dell has missed many chances to make its customer base happy. If they took this opportunity to “make Jeff happy:” while continuing to shortchange and frustrate the rest of their customer base, that would be cynical and dishonest. Jeff’s case is an example of how customers get treated at Dell. He doesn’t pretend to deserve special treatment. He just wants what he paid for.
Rubel says Dell should have “put their best tech on a plane” to take care of this “A-lister.” Should they do the same for any customer who has an identical problem? If not, why not? What makes Jeff special?
All this “marketing advice” you cite boils down to one fundamental fact: A group of people thinks that it’s OK for Dell to treat a high-profile customer better than its average customer. (And there are others who’ve chimed in since I wrote my original post, like Hailey Suitt, who says that Michael Dell himself should have got on a plane to Jeff’s house.) Wrong, wrong, wrong. Dell needs to get their act together across the board, and when they do, maybe people like Jeff and me will write about them in a different way.
The best marketing advice for Dell is to listen to their customers, whether that input comes from message boards, Web sites, phone calls, blogs, letters, or smoke signals. Then use that input to identify problems and fix them.
sure the technocrati are becoming more insular – they are swamped by inbound messages. everybody wants a piece.
i can see both sides – sure companies should treat all their customers well. but of course they dont.
this is the 21st century. Stars don’t pay their own way, and they influence buying behaviours. why do companies give away thousands of dollars worth of stuff in oscars goodie bags? because of the attention their brands will recieve.
it seems to me that scoble, steve and jason all gave some good pragmatic advice. whether it feels democratic or not.
of course companies should treat a-listers well. what – you think walt mossberg at the Journal is treated like a normal customer? of course not.
it seems to me that the technocrati in this case just understand the game. we may not like it, but its a fact of life.
i have clout with IBM. if i got screwed by one part of the company i would not hesitate to call in some favours to try and get the problem fixed. usually though i find IBM stuff i use (Thinkpad mostly) to be exemplary, which is why is why i say good things about it on my blog.
i dont see anyone complaining when an a-lister says nice things about something they like. i mean isn’t that what blogging is all about?
having said all that, tomorrow i might say the opposite. i would like to see a-listers be a-linkers. sharing the love is a good thing.
You’re dead-on about catering to the well-known user being unethical. This is exactly the kind of trouble BYTE readers used to have. Jerry Pournelle, a columnist for BYTE, would get all kinds of bend-over-backwards special treatment from companies whenever he had problems. Then he’d write glowing articles about how wonderful Company $FOO’s products and services were, and how they went the extra mile to make him happy. Of course they did… he was Jerry Pournelle, columnist for a huge computer press rag and famous in his own right as a sci-fi novelist. Other users with less fame also had less fortune in the customer-service arena. Pournelle, for his part was (or acted like he was) blissfully unaware of any special effort by companies on his behalf.
When I wrote a local newspaper’s tech column, I made a point of writing reviews only after contact with the company where they did not know I was a journalist. In at least one case this drew the ire of a prominent local ISP that I gave a bad review to (they were spouting off nonsense about how DSL worked that was completely made-up), who were very reluctant to talk to me later on because of it. In the end, they got friendly with me again because they knew not talking to me would look even worse.
The webmaster of another website that contains a lot of complaints about Dell computers suggested that I send the following info to you. Just trying to get the word out and bring some pressure to bear on Dell to treat its customers better and, if possible, get compensation for their victims if the company is (as it appears) breaking the law. You may post all or any part of this message, but again, please keep my name and email address confidential.
The Texas Attorney General’s office sent me this link where consumers can file a complaint against Dell. You do not have to be a Texas resident to file.
As with most state AG’s they do not take action on individual complaints. But, if they get enough of them, they can file a class action suit on behalf of consumers and force Dell to provide refunds and competent tech support.
The issues I have complained about are as follows:
If you buy one of the WD or Maxtor hard drives Dell uses in its systems at any retailer, you get a 5-year warrantee. If you buy them from Dell you get only Dell’s warrantee (which can be as little as one year). That includes the hard disk that shipped with your Dell computer. In short, Dell’s warrantee invalidates the manufacturer’s warrantee and substitutes it with a Dell warrantee which, in many cases is of lesser value.
Dell claims its warrantee allows it to replace a defective hard drive with a refurbished one.
If Dell has to replace a component more than twice, it refuses to send any more replacements. This appears to be a violation of federal law: UCC-Title 15, Chapter 50, Sec. 2304 (a)(4) which states that the minimum allowable warrantee (explicit or implied) places the burden on the merchant to repair or replace defective products at its own expense.
In most cases, Dell requires consumers to do all or most of the diagnosis and repair (again, this appears to violate the federal statute).
The law specifies that a CONSUMER (rather than the merchant) has the right to elect a refund or replacement where a reasonable number of repair attempts have been made and those repairs failed to remedy the problem. In my case, I claimed that a reasonable number of attempts had been made when the amount of time I had to devote to installing replacement hard drives and running the diagnostics Dell demanded, at the normal hourly rate that I charge my clients for doing such things, exceeded more than double the price I paid for the computer.
Dell promised to refund the purchase price of my computer, then later reneged on that promise. Dell first offered to replace my new machine with a refurbished one. I refused on the ground that I had not originally purchased a refurbished machine (which Dell sells at a lower price.) Dell then offered to refund an unspecified sum that it claimed would be substantially less than what I paid Dell for my computer. The company’s argument was that the value of the machine had depreciated in the time that I owned it. My reply was that the value of the currency had also depreciated. I also pointed out that I believe Dell violated the law (and its own warrantee) by ceasing to provide replacement parts and forcing me to do the labor without compensation.
I also complained that Dell did not disclose the full terms of its warrantee to customers placing orders by phone.
If consumers who have purchased Dell computers encountered situations similar to one or more of those listed above, filing a complaint with the TX Attorney General will make it more likely that the government will take action against Dell. They need to see repeated violations of federal and/or state law before they can take action. If anyone has made a complaint to Dell, they should also file a complaint with the Attorney General’s office to get it on record.
Dell customers should also file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in Dell’s place of business. A negative endorsement from the BBB will have a direct effect on Dell sales and may potentially influence legislation, litigation and law enforcement decisions to act on behalf of consumers.
In short, while it may be instructive or make consumers feel better to post complaints on web sites such as yours, formal complaints to the AG and BBB are what is going to get this matter resolved. Similar complaints about Compaq years ago led to a drastic drop in consumer confidence and the company eventually being acquired by HP (which I have found to have excellent tech support and customer service).
The A-list bugs me to no hell, But then I realised something. And it stinks/
I would honestly like you to read it and gimme an opinion.
Regards,
Shri.
Since that doesn’t appear to be happening, nor is it causing Dell stock or sales to drop, your best action is to refrain from buying a Dell product the next time.