Laptop hard drive shortage

[akers]

On Oct 25th I ordered a Dell XPS 17. I paid the extra $25 for next business day delivery and the delivery date was to be November 9th. On the morning of the 9th I received an email from Dell telling me that there would be a delay and the new delivery date was the 23rd. The email did not explain why. I called customer support and they told me that the flooding in Thailand has resulted in a shortage of hard drives. About five hours later I received a second email from Dell revising the delayed delivery date until the 29th. Holy cow pie !!!!!!!!!

If you go to the Dell web site right now (5:45 PM PST, Nov 9) and configure an XPS 17 it will tell you that the ship date is 11/23/2011.

Dell really needs to get its stuff together. It is unacceptable that they waited until the delivery date to tell me of the delay. I took a day off work (no pay) to be here so I could sign for the laptop. Then they added six days to the delay just a few hours later.

No wonder Dell has slipped to from number one to number three in computer sales. The problem is not the flooding in Thailand, it is Dell not taking care of customers and notifying them in a timely manner.

 

[Zap]

the flooding in Thailand has resulted in a shortage of hard drives.

Where have you been the past couple weeks? This has been talked about several times in Memory and Storage, in General Hardware, in Hot Deals, in Off Topic and just about everywhere else. It is an industry wide problem, not a Dell problem.

 

[nickb64]

If Dell can't get enough drives, they can't get enough drives, that's just the way it is. It's affecting everyone. It's certainly not entirely their fault. Shit happens, natural disasters and stuff are a fact of life.

 

[rockyct]

Most of the build-to-order computer makers don't actually take possession of the computer parts until that part is needed for a computer. Dell got as big as it did really because of this "Just in Time" production. Now you're seeing the downside of it. If the inventory supply line gets damaged, they are screwed, and that's exactly what happened. The floods may not have directly affected the current supply, but there has been a lot of hoarding of them and that has dried up the supply.

Everything is automated now. They probably had a shipment of hard drives scheduled to be delivered on the 9th and the hard drive manufacture didn't notify them until that day arrived.

I do love how you're an expert at computer hardware manufactures and imply that HP's excellent customer service has kept them on top...