Comments on: Dell closing plant as part of 8,800 layoffs

Computer maker is closing its flagship factory in Austin, Texas, amid hard times.

[Rants&Raves]

Focus on what matters Dell !

There are plenty of low-cost manufacturers out there, but users need to trust those they do business with. That's why they come back or decide to look for alternatives.

Frankly, if you treat every customer they way you have treated me, then I am not surprised fewer and fewer people will be willing to do business with you. I've dealt with a lot of companies in my 30+ years in this industry, and yours provided the worst experience ever, bar none; that's a pretty low standard to establish.

[Dead Soulman]

Keep it in the house

As long as Dell doesn't decide to ship all those jobs outside the country or reward its executives with bonuses for firing almost 9000 families, then I'd consider it a company restructuring. Sure it makes things difficult to lose your source of income in such an abrupt fashion. But, I think Dell employees are probably used to Dell's not so spectacular employee treatment.

[42istheanswer]

I'll bet

the jobs go south of the border or some other ridiculous notion. Certainly they'll go elsewhere and not come back. American workers are too expensive. Get used to it. Once the Union of North America is finally in place, you'll get the same wages as your Mexican brothers and then we can bring the jobs back home to the good ol' USA.

[gary sayre]

Where is the congress when you need it

Dell just opened a new customer service center in Oklahoma City just a couple of years ago. The parking lot is full every day. So why are they getting rid of 9,000 other employees?
I will never buy Dell products again. Hows that for a one person boycott.

[pugster]

Not dealing direct anymore.

Alot of Dell's pc's come preconfigured and sold thru B&M's like Staples, Best Buy, etc... thus don't need these factories which assemble pc's. Other companies like HP and IBM uses third party companies like Insight and CDW to customize the computers for them.

[gary sayre]

preset

My employer told me he had bought a Dell computer a few years back, it was programmed to fail after a certian perion of time. This was even covered in the news and Dell was found guilty. How can they stay in business?

[mbenedict]

Outsource to China, like Apple does

...then stick a "Designed in Austin" sticker and all is good.

[The_Decider]

lol

Few hardware components are manufactured outside of China.

[TxTom]

Not all

Mac Mac Pro G5 AND my Mac Pro (Intel Quad Core) are both homegrown and designed. The mini's and the iMac's are outsourced, but the pro gear is kept stateside and has some of the highest quality of any machine made.

[ServedUp]

Dell's next strategy

I think Michael Dell should start thinking about the future. I believe he knows he has to shutdown Dell and give all the money back to the shareholders.
Now whats he waiting for?

[jolivera42]

Agreed

I think that strategy is correct and I am sure that Steve Jobs would
agree that Dell should use that strategy

[xcopy]

Do you work for apple?

Hmmm. Drink kool-aid and join that diptard apple cult or buy a Dell. What to do?

I'll buy Dell, 8 days a week....

Dell screws up a lot, but Apple? Mac owners? I'd rather cut my nuts off...

[Imalittleteapot]

Stupid idiots.

Biggest complaint is customer service. So, fire your customer service people. Don't layoff the people that make the computer if the complains aren't about the people making the friggin computer. Why do company always get rid of person B because person A is a complete F'in screw up?

I'd rather be running successful business that overpaid for service than the other way around anyway.

What's wrong with Dell's customer service? Well it's just like everybody else's.

My friend bought an MP3 player from Dell that was missing components in the packaging. No big deal, just ship it back and have a new one shipped. What does Dell say? They have to pay the shipping costs for Dell's screw up. No no no no no no wrong wrong wrong wrong!!!! Do other companies do this? Yes. Should Dell? Well let's ask Dell how that's working for them?

If something needs shipped back because of a mistake the company made then the company should cover shipping costs.

Every product should have a two year on-site, problem free, everything covered (including shipping) warranty free anyway. If you can't guarantee your product doesn't last at least two years, you have basically just told me you build a crappy product. Do other companies do this? Sure. Isn't that exactly why Dell should not do it? Yes! Freaking idiots!

[Galaxy5]

MIssing pieces?

"My friend bought an MP3 player from Dell that was missing
components in the packaging."

Would never happen with a shrink-wrapped Apple product.
Every palette is weighed, going in and coming off the plane or
truck - and this is one of the reasons Apple chose to put retail
stores out there, so you're not paying UPS to go back and forth
for missing pieces or stupid issues like this.

Dell's got a lot wrong. See if they can fix it, but I think we're just
starting to see the slide.

[zeroplane]

You touched on something

I would bet the average $1.20 an hour wage Dell is paying someone in India is far less than what the Union/American workers are paid in the States.

I would bet, the factories are closing in America and opening back up in a 3rd world country.

[thetruth1960]

Make that two

No, not just one person boycutt. Make that two. I stopped buying Dell product for my company 3 years ago because of their customer service.

As many said, they are barking at the wrong tree. Improve your customer service, and I bet you will not need to fire 9K people. Dell was on top at one point, they could be again, but not by taking jobs away from the US and taking those jobs outside.

Has any of you call GoDaddy's customer service. I've only had great experiences talking to people who speak English in the good old U.S. of A. Dell, as well as other companies, should learn from that. I don't want to talk to someone in India whose name is "Jim" or "Scott" or "Pete" who have no idea what they are doing, as it was my experience 3 years ago when talking to Dell's customer service.

[pj-mckay]

What are you all on????

You wanted low cost products; Dell gave you them. They make what? $50 per sale maybe??? Then you expect dumb users that can't plug the bits together to get great service, and the folk that have real problems can't get proper help. A victim of their own success to a point!

Get real... you can't do both, hence the lay-offs. It's not that the products are bad, they're just sold too cheap. HP & Compaq have never been cheap yet they're number 1. At the end of the day you get what you pay for. Pay cheap you get crap service... live with it or pay more.

I'm sorry for the staff involved but it's affecting the whole of the western civilisation, and brought on by us all buying cheap, good quality, from the East. Me too, and one day I'll be a victim too, no doubt. Dell would be dumb not to build in the East as many manufacturers now do. Many of them are held in high acclaim and not black listed like some muppets are suggesting in this thread. If it's worth buying; Buy it!

[GameGuru5000]

NAFTA being the cause

Dell is firing computer assemblers because they want to move their manufacturing else where, like Mexico. The cost to pay employees in Mexico is much cheaper. I think it's a rediculous idea.
Welcome to unemployement Americans.
Thanks to Dell utilizing NAFTA!

[Fireweaver]

And the packaging

Maybe if Dell makes all of their packaging look ultra cool no one will notice!

[Galaxy5]

Maybe if they used less of it...

Maybe if they used decent packaging and less of it, they'd save
money and ship more product, as Apple has.

Of course they make everything out of sharp metal and cheap
plastic, so they need a ton of styrofoam to keep things together.

What a nice experience owning a Dell must be.

[BALTHOR1]

I think that Cray is the only computer manufacturer

These plants could be where Dell is virused.

[fred dunn]

They paid no heed to their customer's wants

Customers, even enterprise customers were asking for AMD when AMD was still hot and Dell would have no part of it. HP did and they got the business.
Also Dell was too "fixed" on their Build to order model which, despite their logistical genious still made the systems cost more than the "boxed computers' that you could pick up immediately at the closest Circuit City, Best Buy, or wherever.
The nail in the coffin for Dell was when they decided to go after the low low end systems and to afford that market they had to sacrifice their once stellar customer service to offshore facilities where sometimes the customer could not even understand the Dell rep and no one "owned" the problem, rather you would just get bounced back and forth.
I feel very bad for the Dell personnel losing their jobs because the idiots at the top "knew better than their customers" and "Michael Dell wouldn't switch from an ALL INTEL house because they were getting kick backs of up to a Billion (with a 'B') dollars in kick-backs (what Intel calls their customer appreciation and advertising dollars. Yeah right.).
Their standard warranty has gone to one year where it used to be three so what advantage do they have when it is essentially a commodity market with a manufacturer's wrapper?
None.

[Intellimanis]

Time has changed

The recent turmoil in the dell is because ; the once ingenious strategy the dell devised has fallen back in times. Keeping costs low is so paramount, that the low logistics costs that dell had, has not been able to absorb the rise in material costs. where has other PC manufacturers has moved to low cost destinations ; dell has not done that. product differentiation is not so great in the PC industry.

[Galaxy5]

Wow. Remember 1997?

Apple laid off 5000, and everyone (including C|Net) said it was the
end for Apple. Of course they were a much smaller company back
then than Dell is now, but where's the talk of Dell's death knell?

[Thomas, David]

OK

As numero dos in providing personal computers, in a market that
will still grow while in a recession (just slower), only a crazy person
would sing that song.

There are no bells tolling the fate of Dell. If there are, those bells
are small, and in the hands of Dell. Unless they change, eventually
those bells will grow too heavy for them to control. It's up to Dell.
But I only see them screwing up more, in the near future.

[paulej]

Dell Customer Service Bad, but not Worse

Dell does have issues with its customer service. I've been a buyer of Dell computers for a very long time and I continue to buy them because they do make good machines. I have never been disappointed with a Dell desktop. (No experience with laptops.)

As for their customer service, it is bad, but not worse than other companies. Have you called HP's support? You'll get the same kind of idiot answering the phone. Perhaps they even share support staff?

The support staff read scripts. They have a FAQ. They really do not know or understand the technology. They're not well-trained. Oh, and HP's support staff uses Google to find answers :-) (I'm not kidding... but if I could have found the answer via Google, I would not need to call them.)

So, what's the real problem? My guess is that people just have not owned HPs long enough to have a need to complain seriously. I do recall very well about 10 years ago that our company owned (quite regretfully) a stack of Compaq machines-- they were really bad.

Today, it seems that the HP and Compaq brands are both good. But, Compaq went through a patch of rough times. If lots of people are buying HP and start having problems, perhaps they will switch back to Dell.

In any case, I will continue to buy Dell, as I have nothing but good words to say about their machines. Support is another issue, but it seems to be a common problem in the industry -- even far beyond the PC industry.

If Dell is able to reduce staff and still continue to ship current volumes of machines, I think they will stablize and begin to grow again.

[PC-Enclosure]

It's a shame that such a high profile manufacture has hit hard times, maybe it is time for them to look at their outsourcing policy, as this seems to have helped Apples bottom line.