The False Economics of Cheapness

Real Life | 11 October 2006 | LibKill

[Anti-Bubba182]

What makes this crazier is that Hard drives are cheap.

[RichardW]

I've had two Dells for three years now and flog them daily with no problems. What's the point of this thread anyway? Got up on the wrong side of the bed?

[Egon]

Been there, done that. My wife's machine would pause every other second for about three seconds. That meant that for every five seconds, you could get about two seconds of work done. Over the space of six months (under warranty, thankfully), we replaced:

• power supply
• harddrive
• memory
• DVD player
• motherboard

I'm not kidding. Nothing worked until everything was replaced. Not planning to buy another Dell.

[Ham Hock]

I have a 15 year old dell that just gave up the ghost. That's not to shabby as far as I am concerned.

[Egon]

My Dell laptop, on the other hand, has been the best machine I've ever had!

[LibKill]

I've had two Dells for three years now and flog them daily with no problems. What's the point of this thread anyway? Got up on the wrong side of the bed?

Not at all. I did experience much moaning and such from the boss fella about Dells but I'm over that. :)

I know many Freepers are business owners and/or in a position to make decisions such as, "Should we save a few bucks by using junk parts?"

Sometimes you get one chance and only one chance. It's not like Dell is the only company making computers.

[Cicero]

I've bought about 10 or 12 Dells since I gave up on Gateway Computers. All of them worked fine.

[BunnySlippers]

It could be worse.

I own a Mac .. actually 5. Ever seen a Mac thread? Much abuse.

[MediaMole]

It turns out that Dell uses reconditioned parts in their new machines and the reconditioned hard drive was defective.

I seriously doubt this. It would be a welcome mat for a class action suit.

The replacement drive might have been reconditioned, but if the system was sold as new, the parts have to be new.

I'm no big fan of Dell, but they would be suicidal to use reconditioned parts in systems they sell as new.

[sgtbono2002]

Dell is recycling. recycling , get it?

[pandoraou812]

My dell works fine, I have a friend who has added stuff to it as hes a computer tech. Its 6 yrs old. I personally won't buy a dell because all tech help is outsourced to India and I could not understand the people trying to help me. I won't deal with any other company who outsources their tech help. I will just get my friend to build me a new computer when the need arises.

[Chode]

if they are selling recons as NEW... SUE their ass.

[LibKill]

The contract tech, who does a fair bit of warranty business in two states replacing faulty Dell parts, told me that they use reconditioned parts. I did not make this up.

Bear in mind that I myself am not a computer tech, although I do sometimes work on my own computers and have built many. So could a monkey if it could use a screwdriver and read english. Real techs have to know more than just how to bolt 'em together.

I am not interested in suing Dell. I'm not even really interested in Dell at all. The point of this post is The False Economics of Cheapness. Sometimes it costs more to be cheap than to do quality work. It sure did in this case.

[Moonman62]

The contract tech, who does a fair bit of warranty business in two states replacing faulty Dell parts, told me that they use reconditioned parts. I did not make this up.

Either you misunderstood him, or he should get fired. It's not unusual for replacement parts to be refurbs, but I find it hard to believe they would put one in a new machine.

BTW, new parts fail, too, and in general refurbs have a lower failure rate.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten. On another note, my Kingston flash drive just went through the washer and the dryer, and it still works. Amazing.

[BikerJoe]

Being in the computer 'binness, I've recommended Dell in the past, but have stopped doing so (especially for laptops).

I've seen 3 different Dell laptops, all under 2 years old, where the lcd/external monitor switching circuitry would go flaky. The lcd screen itself was fine, but you could only use the laptop (sometimes to restore things by uninstalling the Dell video driver) by connecting an external monitor.

Pretty bad...

[nvcdl]

It could be the local PC maintenance company uses refurbed parts.

[jrp]

I bought a refurbed Dell business laptop 3 years ago. Have dropped it hard 3 or 4 times and it still works fine.