Dell ranks at the very bottom...

Check out Forrester's new Customer Experience Survey:

" Dell landed at the bottom of the PC rankings because it was rated well below the other firms in the areas of being easy to work with and being enjoyable"

As the New York Times reports:

" Apple notched an 80 percent, or “good” rating, in Forrester’s customer experience index, which is an average of responses on topics like whether companies meet customer needs and make products that are easy and enjoyable to use.

Gateway scored a 66; Hewlett-Packard, a 64; and Compaq (a brand owned by H.P.), a 63 — scores that Forrester considers “poor” rankings in the customer experience index.

Dell got a miserly 58 percent, a “very poor” rating."

Looks like Dell has their work cut out for them.

P.S.: Personally, I don't quite understand this extremely weak result for Dell. In my own experience, I was always quite happy with any of the many Dells I have bought over the years, and I did find their customer service to be quite good most of the time. I do not have too much experience with the other PC makers, but the one time I had called HP for help with a printer issue was such a complete and utter disaster that I decided I'd never, ever want to deal with HP again...

 

My vostro is the first dell I have personally owned, and I have nothing but good things to say about it. We also have several that I bought for our company back in early 2006 that are still running strong and actually still do our engineers calc pretty well. The bigger the company the bigger the target imho.

 

I think this rating has at least something to do with the whole nVidia debacle. Though this hit pretty much all laptop manufacturers, somehow Dell was always named in news regarding this issue....don't know if it's the case but it could be.

I had great experiences so far. Had some issues but never had better support from any company...that's their business support, stories about the consumer line are very different.

 

I would question the survey; the survey population was less than 4,600 consumers - be interested to learn how those consumers were chosen.

 

True...as it always goes with these things...it's very important to know how and where it's taken

 

I can understand the Apple ranking, but yeah the HP ranking higher than the Dell doesn't quite fit into my experience either. They must be doing something right though. HP is outselling Dell by quite a significant amount, and if you look in the stores, there are usually many more HP and Acer machines than Dell ones.

 

Dell used to only be available online, only in the past few years have you been able to buy a Dell in a store.
HP and Acer get on the shelves so much because they're extremely cheap.

 

Maybe the shipping has something to do with the lower score. If you can buy an HP in the store and then return it to the same store if you don't like it, you'll probably grumble less than if you had to wait for Dell to ship it to you, find out you don't like it, and go through the hassle of shipping it back.

I'm just guessing here though.

 

The problem, I think, is that the vast majority of those that responded to the survey bought Dell's cheap consumer models (Inspiron and Studio), and I think it's fairly obvious that their "home" support isn't that great. The business support, I'd say, is on par with Apple's, but then again, what normal people (non laptop enthusiasts) buy Latitudes or Precisions?

 

It's also a matter of perspective too I think. I remember laughing at this woman on engadget who was gloriously happy with Apple because they gave her great service when she had to bring in her Macbook computer 10 times to get it fixed for various different issues. In her mind she was 100% satisfied with the Apple support from the store.

The rest of us, as onlookers, were wondering what crack she was smoking because we'd probably be quite unhappy losing so much time and productivity from a machine that broke down 10 times. Many of us would have given an unsatisfactory score for the same thing, as a laptop breaking down that many times is unacceptable.

 

Why isn't Lenovo on there? As much as I hate Lenovo, their service (well real service, not at my college service) is actually pretty good.

I had to call Lenovo about a thinkpad problem. I got a guy that spoke english that was in the US. I explained my problem to him (had to also explain the power button was on the keyboard) and we were good to go.

 

Why in the world do you hate Lenovo? It's one of the few brands I have almost nothing bad to say about.

 

My thinkpad blew it's motherboard religiously. I have seen the following problems show up quite a bit on the T61 model

• Chronic hard drive failure
• motherboards blowing (not just mine)
• laptop heating and popping motherboard
• a/c adapters
• defective batteries
• trackpad buttons breaking off (require replacement of the bezel)

Maybe the numbers might be out of whack because there are 2500 thinkpads here but after seeing the problems, eh sorry. I dont even work on the things, so I dont know what other problems the service center finds.

The motherboard on my t60 was replaced 4 times between January 08 and June 08.

With that said, I'm not saying that I wouldn't buy one. I would just make sure to get a 2 year warranty (that's about as long as I keep laptops). I'm not a Dell fanboy or Lenovo hater ... just a little cautious of the quality.

 

I love how it says Dell got a low ranking for "not being easy to work on".

No mention of that in Apple's rating? Are they joking???? Apple's are NOT user friendly to upgrade. A lot of people think they need special "mac" ram and "mac" hard drives to upgrade as well.

How can you take points away from Dell, but fail to take into account the same fact for Apples. Just goes to show you the bias in the media. I bet whoever wrote that was on a mac.

 

I agree. This has got to be the most ridiculous maketing trick ever. And people actually pay double price for it.

Yep. People like Apple. It's just a likable company. Half of Apple is Steve Jobs and their PR department. Without it, they'd be something like Sony.

 

Meh, the results of that survey parallel another that I saw conducted by consumer reports. Essentially, all manufacturers had low / unimpressive rankings with the exception of Apple.

Aside from 'paying for better service' - one of the only reasons I can think of why Apple does well is because they actually have store locations that sell and service - "genius bars" anyone? They also know that they are selling expensive stuff and they better deliver.

Dell planted itself in Bestbuy, which is another underachiever when it comes to service, how does that help anything? Bestbuy won't even service you there if you don't pay big bucks for their warranties - they just mail it out to dell.

So there you have it maybe. These companies are obviously good at building computers we want to pay 1500 dollars for, but they are not good at addressing out problems or fixing our defects.

 

How can Dell be behind Sony, HP, and Compaq, let alone Gateway??? Are you kidding me?

Obviously, the users who answered this poll are idiots.

edit: The reason why Macs are so great with customer service is because for the most part idiots don't buy macs. While people might think poorly of Mac owners, idiots don't see a reason to spend 2000$ on a laptop when you can get one for 499 (a la MS's new commercials). They are dealing with computer people for the most part and that's why Mac has a higher approval rating.

 

Not the mac people I know.

 

Agree, all of the Mac owners I know with the exception of my father are fairly computer illiterate.
He admits it's only brand loyalty keeping him with Apple, not a better product. He's even started switching his business to PCs.

 

It's not a coincidence that they all are that way...since they claim that OSX somehow makes them so much more productive right away. I do have to give OSX credit for the whole 1 button does everything approach. Though, even more surprising to me is when one of these mac guys wanted me to point him in the direction of a PC which would be better suited to "college." I guess it works both ways, eh?

 

How was this statistic taken? Why are other major OEMs such as Lenovo, Asus, etc. not mentioned whereas HP gets a second mention with Compaq?

Comparing Dell to Barnes and Noble seems like it could easily lead to a varying experience based on what users were expecting. I am not saying Dell is the best company out there as they do have some rather idiotic policies (e.g. no modifications or standard returns on products that are unbuilt) but they certainly aren't the worst OEM I've dealt with and are far from it.

 

I'm honestly not surprised. Dell makes products superior to almost anyone in their price category, but their support is some of the worst I've ever dealt with, at least for home users. I guess we do have the option for good support, but the problem is we have to pay half the value of the notebook itself to get it!

 

I think you hit the nail on the head here. Maybe that's why Dell got such a low score. The high end business line gets great support. Precision owners usually rave at how well they are treated when they call in for support. Latitude owners are pretty happy too, although we get a different department when we call I think. The home units though get some pretty ugly support. That cost cutting nonsense needs to change and all the levels need to somehow be consolidated.

 

That's for damn sure. If I buy an Inspiron or a Studio, does that make me less of a Dell customer than someone who buys a Vostro or Precision?

 

Yes, by about 30% when you look at how much money you spent.

 

What if I build a $900 Studio notebook, but someone else builds a $750 Latitude, assuming neither of us alters the standard warranty and service options at all, strictly hardware?

 

Then the Studio is going to have a higher cost of parts too, because you're going to get better specs. You can't say it like that, you have to compare identical hardware.
Go configure a Studio with the same hardware as a Latitude and you'll see what I mean about the higher price.

Also man, I keep wanting to say it but haven't. Ska is dead, get over it.



Just kidding, I love ska, so high five. Well, not 2-tone or trad so lots of people wouldn't consider it ska, favorite bands are like Stuck Lucky and The Flaming Tsunamis. (off topic)
Hep hep hep hep!

 

For the most part, similar specs between the two models cost roughly the same, but the Latitude has some ridiculously excessive prices on hardware that doesn't realistically cost nearly as much. Like the memory, or hard drive. The Latitude E6400 comes standard with 1GB of RAM and 80GB hard drive...upgrading to 4GB of RAM costs over $100! And I don't remember the hard drive prices, but even 250GB was something exorbitantly high as well.

Haha, good to see someone else on this forum knows what my shirt means.

I'm mostly into newer third wave ska and 2-tone (Mustard Plug, Reel Big Fish [the shirt in question is from a RBF show], the Forces of Evil, the Toasters, Deal's Gone Bad, etc.), but I do like some older stuff as well. The Skatalites, Desmond Dekker, The Specials, etc.

 

Businesses used to be I think more okay with spending more on upgrades on business laptops. However...as most people probably did when buying their new Latitudes, they just went with 1 DIMM so that they could add another purchased much cheaper at places like Newegg.

But anyway, this survey is pretty much junk. It's sorta like that Greenpeace survey that ranked companies the lowest when they didn't respond to it.

 

Businesses are not as adaptable and knowledgeable about what consumers do to save a buck as you might think. You might forgo an upgrade to get a part you want later, but no one in my IT department did - the savings were pretty nil and you were 'spending someone else's' money anyway. That and, the director did not seem to think that one required 4 Gb or Ram and a 500 Gb harddrive nearly as bad as 'joe enthusiast' did.
Hence, changes in upgrade prices have a whole lot more to do with everything else in the world (markets, availability, shipping costs, product positioning, age, inventory, ect.) than with the possibility that lots of people skip an upgrade because they plan to buy and install themselves later-to save 20-50 bucks (or whatever it is).

And as for Greenpeace . . . well that is just silly. Why would any company on this earth admit openly that they pollute the hell out of the planet with their activities? I am not surprised they didn't respond, it would cause a lot of damage. Luckily, Greenpeace can base their survey on observable facts that cannot be hidden or denied by said companies, such as the composition of material in their products, and the ability of them to be disposed of responsibly in the global waste stream. Even though your arrogant and ignorant dismissal of the survey enrages me, I will let it go since you just obviously don't know any better.

If this thread were a survey, 10 people hating on dell and 2 people liking them would not debunk the results, it would reflect some truth. But I can guess which 2 people would think that the survey was 'worthless'. Disagreement with fact and generation of fact are not the same thing.