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> Geez! -- A Floppy Drive costs less than 50 bucks at your local computer
> store and most computers rarely need them these days-- Maybe principles are
> important sometimes, but was it really worth all the hassle? :)
Yes, and vendors need to understand that. They make money because we use
their services. Dell does not manufacture floppies, they put together
systems - we pay them to do that. If the system does not work, Dell has
not done the job for which we have paid them.
If it's no big deal for me to determine why the floppy has failed (is it
BIOS settings, the adapter card, the floppy, bad cabling/powering, etc) then
I would probably not ask Dell to put my system together, charge me for that,
charge me shipping and charge me for a service agreement. (All those costs
are amortized into what they charge me).
The reason I am buying from them is because I anticipate they will do the
job right. If I knew upfront they would not, I would likely not buy from
them. Maybe I don't have the expertise to fix it myself, maybe I don't have
the time, maybe I do have the expertise but I don't want to jeopardize some
service contract by pulling the system apart myself. Maybe there is no
local computer store for me to go to and spend more of my money becuase
Dell didn't do the job right that I already paid for.
I understand that problems and mistakes happen but any vendor that thinks
I should be the one to jump through hoops over their mistakes is a poor
vendor. If it worth the hassle for me to buy from them, it should be
worth their hassle to get it right.
If it is a hassle to get Dell to fix a $50 floppy that they put in my machine,
then I would expect a $250 hard drive problem to be a bigger hassle, or a
$700 monitor so big a hassle that Dell may be well beyond caring about me
any more. If they can't be happily responsible for a defunct floppy they
sold me, what sort of pride do they take in the lesser things like 5 cent
connectors that help secure my motherboard. If they fail to demonstrate
integrity when I can observe it, why do expect better from them in places
I cannot observe it?
>From the small sample of responses, it seems Dell usually get it right and
do a good job. But when they get it wrong, you may be one of the many that
are really hosed over.
Principles are important - I will probably never buy from Dell unless all
the options are worse than those that some have experienced from Dell.
Chris Norrie
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