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Dell UK’s Quality procedure sucks!

I usually become very annoyed when I buy something from a big supplier and something goes wrong. This result from the fact that there is usually some elaborate ‘returns procedure’ that must be followed strictly and any subsequent calls to customer service/support usually involves speaking to several agents and a significant waste of precious time.

These negative experiences can be avoided if proper quality control procedures are built into the process. It should be the objective of the company to minimize customer contact after sales unless the customer is interested in purchasing additional products or to upgrade current products. The obvious reason for minimizing customer contact is that support whether by telephone or home/office visit or even visit to the company’s website involves significant costs; labour, bandwidth and otherwise.

The Dell experience is often a frustrating one if a problem is involved. I recently purchased a Sony DVD Writer to upgrade my Dell Dimension 5150 Desktop computer and all five (5) issues that I had could have been solved by better quality control procedures. These are listed below:

• A firmware upgrade was needed to enable the DVD drive to play certain DVD’s on a computer using the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. I only found out the problem when I attempted to play some ‘dual layer’ DVD’s in my new DVD drive and it would not work. The frustrating thing about this experience is that Dell was aware of this issue and had a ‘fix’ on their Website but did not provide a note in the box indicating that customers purchasing this particular DVD Writer needed to download and upgrade the firmware on the drive.
• A firmware upgrade is a very dangerous procedure as it could render the drive inoperable if the wrong firmware is used. In order to select the correct ‘firmware’ I decided to use the description of the drive that appeared on my invoice. The invoice listed the manufacturer’s and Dell’s product code as 429-12525. When this item was traced back to Dell’s website it referred to a Sony DVD that was for a Dell Dimension C521 DT System and costing £69.31. The drive that I purchased was for a Dell Dimension 5150 and costs £42.30. This forced me to take additional steps to ensure that the firmware would work with my drive before applying the change. Again. Additional information in the box could have solved this problem.
• This Sony DVD Drive was ‘made in China’. On Dell’s Website they displayed highlights of the drive with one being ‘This product has been tested and validated on Dell Systems to ensure it work with your computer’. This may be true as far as the optical drive is concerned but Dell obviously did not include the length of the data cable that was required and the data cable that was in the box was too short for a Dimension 5150 system. This was annoying as if forced me to buy a data cable which increased my cost of the DVD drive by another £7.00.
• The software that came with the DVD Writer is the very useful Easy Media Creator 9 by Roxio. There was however a Windows Vista compatibility issue that caused Windows Vista to block some of the features of the software. On computer start-up I kept getting the error ‘This Driver is blocked due to compatibility issues

  Check online to see if solutions are available from the Microsoft website. If solutions are found, Windows will automatically display a website that lists steps you can take.

  Driver: Sonic Solutions DLA
  Publisher: Sonic Solutions
  Location: Not available

  A driver is installed that causes stability problems with your system. This driver will be disabled. Please contact the driver manufacturer for an update that is compatible with this version of Windows.
  This Driver is blocked due to compatibility issues

  Check online to see if solutions are available from the Microsoft website. If solutions are found, Windows will automatically display a website that lists steps you can take.

  Driver: Sonic Solutions DLA
  Publisher: Sonic Solutions
  Location: Not available

  A driver is installed that causes stability problems with your system. This driver will be disabled. Please contact the driver manufacturer for an update that is compatible with this version of Windows.’ There was a patch for this problem on Roxio’s Website and again I was surprised that no advance warning was given to customers about this compatibility issue as proper quality control procedures would have revealed the need to update the software with one option being using new installation CD’s in the box.

• Finally, there was a change in the expected delivery date of the product. I have no problem with this as probably the item was ‘out of stock’ when I ordered it. However, I was annoyed that the email that was sent was more appropriate for situations where there is a delay in building a complete computer system instead of a delay in the delivery of one item. This is a quality issue. It is not difficult to create another standard email reply to suit situations where delays exists for ‘parts’ rather than for ‘computer systems’.

I have highlighted five (5) issues that could be solved by someone exercising a little more care or by a simple one page memo indicating what actions will be required after installation of the new optical drive. The drive in question is Dell’s Sony DVD +-RW AW-Q160 SATA Device.

What do you think?