Wow, I just have to say that I had a good laugh there at so many on this board bashing this guy about getting Dell to renew his warranty. I like how it was stated that we are going to take the hit for this incident, well it's interesting to think that even if this were to affect us monetarily it would be in fractions of a cent. I view this board and I am intrigued about how some people know so much about hardware, and stupified at how many just don't understand how the REAL world works despite the fact that they are forced to live in it. If you honestly see a huge problem with what this fella did and that it's going to actually have an impact on you, then you are in fact stupid and actually deserve to be stuck in that low income pay bracket of yours, so forget asking your boss for that raise. Not to mention that most of the people who made such comments don't even buy Dell computers...but that's beside the point.
Now to actually get on topic. I'm not going to sit here and bitch and complain about Dell, been there done that. In all honesty, I have bought several Dell computers and I think that they were quite good back when they were a smaller company, when they were using quality value-based parts and ran their tech support out of Texas. Now they have outsourced it to India to poorly trained techies who run you through a book of solutions that can be found on the company support website that you have already attempted anyways just wasting your time. Dell in becoming the dominant force in the configurable PC market has done what every major organization is guilty of on some level, cutting corners. Hell Michael Dell has been featured several times in Money magazine for his ability to continue to cut costs and sell more units. To fill in the little gaps here cutting costs means lower grade components and selling more units can be attributed to offering lower cost computers making them more appealing for more frequent purchase as well as selling to an increasing number of countries.
jdsemler is right, the LCDs are the same as those that a lot of other major vendors offer, but only to a certain extent, Dell and companies like Dell that bundle monitors with their computers sporting their company logo. This is not new, what has changed is the quality of these generic add-in components for the worse. For example if you bought this monitor from a manufacturer of LCD monitors then you can choose among differenet brands varying in quality.
The fact of lower quality is quite common in large companies, as has already been said. For Dell they are not stupid, they have looked at their alternatives and found that it is cheaper to replace a defective product than invest in higher quality products, that is not necessarily the case but that's how it seems. If this guy has in fact bought $12,000 worth of merchandise then Dell would know and would probably like to keep him satisfied even at a cost. I mean he is definitely not a big fish like their corporate clients but he still does provide them some positive cash flow.
I say good luck to you man, I hope you do get that replacement. Honestly, that's just how Dell operates, if stuff breaks they replace it for you. They did it with my hard drives, CD and DVD drives, even a couple motherboards. At those prices you at least deserve a product that is going to last longer than that measly 1 year warranty they offer.
::ASIDE::
Originally posted by: kornphlake
Actually I do believe that, I've seen headlights on cars go out within days or even hours of each other... certain things do have a finite lifespan. If dell knows their backlights will last 1 year and 1 day and warranties them for only 1 year they're not liable for anything, it's a poor business model, but still it's legal and pretty common, look at american cars built in the early 90's that completely fall apart at 70,000 miles, right after the manufacturer's warranty ends.
You are right it is a poor business model, and yes it is common, but not necessarily intended like you implied with your comment kornphlake. In the past that's how things worked, but with the offering high quality goods introduced by the Japanese you now have to offer quality products just to stay competitive, people still do buy predominantly name brand items (most people buy Duracell not Rayovac...most people anyways). As far as cars built in the early 90's quite a few designs were engineering flaws but aside from that the main reason was that companies got caught in the same mentality as Dell is now. In order to expand even faster they attempted to trade-off quality for lower costs, but did not intentionally do it so that the car would break down after the warranty had expired.
