My on-going rant continues, and will be twittered and fed through Facebook. My hope is that eventually one of Dell’s people will read my blast.

I’ll call this one: Who’s Minding the Store?

Excuse me while I open my briefcase filled with righteous indignation and let it fly. I wonder what people who lived during the incredible time of the Industrial Revolution would think of this blog. Their lives were changed by the advent of processing and manufacturing, machines, and mass production. Long hours. Moving away from farms and into cities.
The world has been spinning out of control. From 1563 when Rev. William Lee invented a knitting device for stockings, through the invention of the airplane and Ford’s Model T, progress has bounded, society changed, life morphed into a fast paced TV Dinner. We lost touch with where our food comes from and how it is grown. And we are also losing the value of quality.

I am just not quite that sure that life has improved. Well, yes it has for the most part become easier, but at what price?

I am going to steer this monologue back to a large corporation known as Dell Computers, founded and largely owned by Michael Dell. Mr. Dell, I’d like to ask you; who’s minding the store?

Getting back to the farm, Dell farms out their customer service and tech support to foreign countries such as India and the Philippines; we have lost touch. We punch 800 numbers into our phones and hope for the best.

By now those who have been following my journey with Dell know that:

•my less-than-a-year-old laptop topped out; I spent months solving issues with Trend Micro, sometimes for hours a day.
•the wireless Bluetooth mouse is forever unrecognized by the computer no matter how any times I install and reinstall it;
•the computer exhibited, within months of purchase, a strange keyboard behavior; letters and words would fly over to other lines and embed themselves into them leaving me with a strange language;
•a technician came to my home twice and replaced the keyboard the first time and the second time the keyboard and the mother board;
•the issue was never resolved and Dell promised me a new computer with the same features or better; it might take three weeks;
•I am still waiting.

Now hear this: I own 6 Dell computers. My son’s is about six years old and never had a problem. So I ask: what has happened in the last six years or so? Who is watching the store?

My son was leaving on a trip to the west coast and then to Hawaii. I volunteered my little net book which I purchased in October (along with a new computer for my son should his old one give way, and a new one for my husband). Soon after I got my mini net book and set up a user account I began to see wonkiness. I couldn’t log in. Looking back now I realize the problem was due to non-other than the keyboard. Sound familiar?

The tech’s solution was to disable my user account.

My son called from the airport to report that he was the only one with a net book who seemed to be unable to get onto the public access wi-fi.

I got a furious, panicky call from him at 5:00 a.m. this morning that the keyboard didn’t work. He couldn’t get into his email, he couldn’t upload his photographs, how would he book his reservations?

I did what I always do in this case; look up the service tag number, and told my son to call tech support. Tech support where thousands of agents have had the joy of hearing from me.

He called back to say he had a chat with a technician in India who verified that he needs a new keyboard. One problem, my son isn’t here, he’s there. On the west coast. The package has to be signed for. I told him to have Dell send the keyboard to his hotel in Hawaii. Hopefully he’ll be able to install it without special tools.

In the meantime, the only way to trick the computer into working is to press two keys at the same time. He is typing in reverse–keeping the shift lock on (one key) so he can type (with the second key). If this isn’t the stupidest thing I have ever heard, next to the insanity I had with my other computer, I don’t know.

But it goes beyond Dell:

I don’t know why after all these years of having Toyotas, I had to deal with the anxiety of a recall of my new hybrid. It is supposedly not on the list but…I think there is a computer problem.

I don’t know why when we switched to Verizon Wireless my husband and son’s phones had to be replaced once and my LG Dare, twice…it still reboots itself on random occasions and turns back on — usually while I am at a movie or worse yet–in the theater. I have to remove the battery. I think it is a computer problem.

I don’t know why our Panasonic VHS/DVD player/recorder had to be replaced three times…it just never worked. I think it is a computer problem.

I don’t know why my Verizon multi-room DVR had to be replaced. The playback speed went crazy. I think it is a computer problem.

The list goes on. And enough rhetoric. I do know why things don’t work. It’s because America has lost touch with quality. Too much is disposable. We don’t manufacture all our products. Everything is farmed out including support. The world economy is a joke. There is no quality control. Maybe it’s just that we’ve all become a mass of greedy slugs going for the big bonus.

It’s downright loss of pride.

It’s disgusting.

I bet you all of those defective parts in all the things that went wrong in all my electronic experiences were manufactured in China, where there doesn’t seem to be a word for quality control. I would love to know.

Notice how all these issues have a common denominator. COMPUTER. The ever-present computer chip appears to more and more unreliable. It is found in cell phones, electronics of all kinds, our toasters, washing machines, run-away Toyotas, electric shavers. Next thing it will be in our milk, having fallen out of a computerized cow.

I decided I am not letting this latest computer issue go so easily. I paid a lot of hard-earned money for all this “stuff” for want of a better word, and I want it right.

All I can say is life was much simpler when life was simpler.
Is it too much to ask for things to work?

reply pestep55 wrote on Mar 14, ’10 The food issues are not computer based but is indeed lack of quality (at best) – Rant on! Yes things should be less troublesome and simplicity should be a goal /:-)

reply vickiecollins wrote on Mar 14, ’10 Where I work a lot is farmed out, but in addition, we are put in a position NOT to provide good customer service. If the company can cut corners anyway at all, good customer service seems to be a forgotten part of the equation.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Mar 14, ’10 pestep55 said The food issues are not computer based but is indeed lack of quality (at best) – Rant on! Yes things should be less troublesome and simplicity should be a goal /:-) Hi Pat, I recently opened a can of cat food that had a white mass of stuff in the middle. It was Lamb and rice and most likely it was not mixed properly. I called Iams and supplied all the numbers. Don’t forget that food production is mechanized from washing fruit to sorting potatoes. The canning and packaging. Machines are involved with everything and they are all computerized.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Mar 14, ’10 Good to see you Vickie. Instead of hosting Poetry Wednesday I find myself flailing and ranting. “good customer service seems to be a forgotten part of the equation.” You said it.

reply sweetpotatoqueen wrote on Mar 14, ’10, edited on Mar 14, ’10 No,I don’t think it is too much to ask for things to work and I think more of us need to demand quality and service!I’ve ranted to Dell myself…same experience you have had with techs across the ocean and endless consumer burden. But I have another BIG beef with Dell. They took big incentive money to come to our area and now are packing up and farming the business out to Mexico without repayment of the incentive $$. So..let them enjoy their new cheaper labor force and crappy customer service. I’ll never buy another Dell..and so it goes.So sorry your son has this frustration when he needs his computer most.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Mar 14, ’10 I am going to try to get through to corporate, this should be interesting. I sent an email to the fellow who dispatched the technician to my home. He’s in Boston and was nice enough to give me his number. He has connections. Someone better straighten this company out.

reply shoppingdreams wrote on Mar 15, ’10 Sing it sister!!!What you said about the lack of quality, it’s so true. I’ve seen a dramatic and obvious decline even in the past five years.If we can’t rely on Dell and Toyota anymore, there really is no hope.I had a problem with my Dell laptop when it arrived. They sent me the wrong plug. I had some arrogant guy in India, who had such a thick accent I could barely understand him, tell me “Madam, I must inform you that you must plug in the computer for it to work.” Cuz ya know, I’m female, and just meant to be a housewife, so he was comfortable treating me as if I was stupid. Oddly, I find the women in the Indian call centres, overall, pretty helpful, but the men are like this guy. I’m not a violent person, but he’s lucky he was not close by. I am on the verge of buying a new laptop, likely a mini. I just assumed I’d buy a Dell. I always have. Clearly, I need to reconsider. But if not Dell, who can we trust? Infuriating. GREAT post, but I’m sorry you are having these issues!

reply agnes128 wrote on Mar 15, ’10 Wow speak about bad working stuff! I had to smile when you told ‘Who is minding the store?’. At home when something technical doesn’t work properly, as telly, phone or web all linked to the same little box, we use to say ‘blame it on the trainee’. Firms are good to either send the things in other countries to be done or put the burden on the lowest of the lowest salary: the trainees (and sometimes they have no salary at all as the working period is part of a wrong named school time :-(). Someone who doesn’t have all the qualifications to work if there is not a tutor around. And we are able to see that behavior everywhere : students minding laboratories on weekends when all the misters and madams big are enjoying their time off, young cashiers taking care of the crowds of Sunday morning, building firms, data processing firms… all working with apprentices, stuffing their pockets with public money and the long hours of the apprentices or trainees. Yup there are some laws about working time in France but those people, especially the trainees, are not recipients : they are ‘out-law’, the law doesn’t know they exist!

reply greenwytch wrote on Mar 15, ’10 a love hate relationship with computers seems almost normal to me, LOL. i’m so sorry you are still going through all this. good luck, hun. HUGS

reply sweetpotatoqueen wrote on Mar 15, ’10 sanssouciblogs said Someone better straighten this company out. You,my dear, are the woman for the job! Do you think Michael Dell would be proud of the way his company is treating customers? I think NOT!

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Mar 15, ’10 There was something on the tv news last week about a woman dying. It seems she had a Rx filled at a chain drug store and the low ranking woman who filled it did so with 10 times the prescribed dose because she misread the decimal or something like that. The world is getting very scary.

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Mar 15, ’10 Deb, I know what you mean about love/hate. But this has been downright beyond the beyond!!! Two new ones so far that don’t work properly. Outrageous.

reply sharons7th wrote on Mar 15, ’10 Sounds like you have gremlins. You might want to go to the exterminators and see if they have a can of gremlin spray hanging around somewhere. Sheesh! Your family is tough on electronics!

reply sanssouciblogs wrote on Mar 15, ’10, edited on Mar 15, ’10 No, electronics are tough on us!

reply philsgal7759 wrote on Mar 15, ’10 Quality has gone down the sewer in the last 25 years. I sure hope you can get this straightened out

reply gileson wrote on Mar 15, ’10 It is easy to blame the “computer” because it is just an inanimte object. Blame it all you want, kick it, beat it, it doesn’t care. Try that with your cat, and even if he is declawed he will find a way to retaliate. Tear down the drapes, poop in your favorite pumps. The problem as you said is there is no pride anymore. Everything is done in mass production. If you work at Dell, you are about as close to making a computer as a guy is to making a car in Detroit when he installs the hubcaps. If he decides, just to relieve the boredom, to put a handful of nuts and washers in one or more of you hubcaps, you may spend weeks trying to figure out where that noice is coming from. I heard of a case where the guy who installs the fenders would stick a coke bottle in a few just for fun. Noisy as hell and damned near impossible to track down. Parts are stuck in these computers from the lowest bidder. You have no way of knowing which, if any of the parts are new, refurbished or just used. Dell and some of the others talk about helping the environment by buying back your old computer so they can be disposed of properly. Horse hockey! They can give you a penny on the dollar for what you paid, tear the old one apart, take the innards and send them all over the country where they find new homes in new computers. Your computer has a new shell around it, but the majority of the components inside are previously owned. You pay for a new computer, but you get a used one. Naturally the computers break down or fail at an extraordinarily high rate, and they knew that, and to keep the profit levels high, they employ “technicians” in Kuala Lumpur and Olongapo Cith and some place just a little southeast of Guam, teach them the fundamentals of English (generally, “Can you hold, please?” Most of them realize that you probably will call on your cell phone and at some point hang up in frustration because you have used up your entire months allocation of minutes on hold. The next sound you hear is “KA-CHING” which is their cash register ringing up the amount of money they saved by NOT helping you. Modern day computing is like a guy giving away dope near the grade school. We get out first computer and discover the internet, and google and Facebook, then the computer craps out. Now you NEED a computer, so you go get a new one. .A year or two goes by, it fails, but now your REALLY NEED a computer, and on and on it goes. We start out small, then we are hooked and we will pay whatever it costs to get our computer high. And the high doesn’t last as long as it do, so we invest in more and more toys for the computer to try to achieve that ultimate high. But that just means more things to go wrong. About the only thing you can do, and you have taken the first step, is blog about it. Go to every chat room, every Multiply Group, put it on the Wall at Facebook, put it in Yoville and Farm ville and whatever else is out there. Email everybody you know and ask them to pass the word that it is really bad investment to get involved with Dell. Zig Ziglar once said that everbody has 150 friends (a number given to him by Funeral Directors all over the country. If they set up 140 chairs, there will be people standing up. If they set up 160 chairs, there will be empty chairs.) He sad that it stands to reason that EACH of those 150 people has 150 friends too. Therefore, if you do something to piss off one of those people, in essence you have pissed off all his friends, because he is going to tell them. Following the numerical progression, each of those people has 150 friends and they will tell all of their friends. At some point you may have thousands of peoople all pissed off for no other reason than their friend was pissed off or had a friend pissed because he got cheated by Dell. His idea was, “Why not make one person happy so he will tell his 150 friends what a good deal he got from you, then they will tell their friends, yadda, yadda yadda.Unfortunately nobody at Dell has ever heard of or listened to Zig Ziglar.