August 27, 2005

dell. hell. tell.

8 Comments

[More Jeff Jar­vis and the “Dell Hell” Saga:] The thing is, when you start tur­ning your pro­ducts into com­mo­di­ties, you start trea­ting your cus­to­mers like com­mo­di­ties.
And it’s a death-spiral that’s damn hard to break out of.
[Back­ground story here.]
[ALSO:] Web 3.0. Jason Kottke spells it out. And a damn good job he does of it, too.

8 Responses to “dell. hell. tell.”

  1. Barry Dorrans says:
    August 27, 2005 at 12:37 pm

    That remin­ded me to blog my own dell hell, where it appears they’re now assu­ming all cus­to­mers are lying. And this was ser­ver sup­port, not consumer.

  2. Michael Martine says:
    August 27, 2005 at 2:54 pm

    With cost-cutting as the goal, ins­tead of bri­lliant cus­to­mer ser­vice and pro­ducts, the ine­vi­ta­ble result is that you will erode any suc­cess you have already achie­ved. If cus­to­mer ser­vice was in rea­lity the goal, then Dell would have done wha­te­ver was neces­sary to ensure that out­come.
    Another side effect to this pro­cess is that you treat your own emplo­yees like com­mo­di­ties, too. Nobody’s human, everything’s a cost cen­ter.
    Think of it as the cost of low pri­ces. That few hun­dred dollars or pounds or euros that you saved don’t seem very impor­tant in the midst of a thorny ser­vice issue.

  3. Scottie says:
    August 27, 2005 at 7:26 pm

    “Dell. We Don’t Get It™.”

  4. mm says:
    August 28, 2005 at 1:33 am

    “when you start tur­ning your pro­ducts into com­mo­di­ties, you start trea­ting your cus­to­mers like com­mo­di­ties.”
    huh? what company’s pro­duct is not a com­mo­dity? isn’t that the whole point of capi­ta­lism, the com­mo­di­fi­ca­tion of things to be sold?

  5. hugh macleod says:
    August 28, 2005 at 4:38 am

    The whole point of capi­ta­lism is to to con­form to its detrac­tors’ ste­reoty­pes, MM.

  6. rethink(ip) says:
    August 29, 2005 at 2:09 am

    Patent Pre­pa­ra­tion and Pro­se­cu­tion Isn’t a Commodity

    Via Brand Autopsy quo­ting Hugh McLeod: …when you start tur­ning your pro­ducts into com­mo­di­ties, you start trea­ting your cus­to­mers like com­mo­di­ties. Patent pre­pa­ra­tion isn’t a com­mo­dity, no mat­ter what some folks think.  When pre­pa­ra­tion and prose…

  7. howarde says:
    September 2, 2005 at 9:40 am

    OH SAY CAN YOU SEE, DAMNED DELL AND WINDOWS ME?
    Well, I fought them on Win­dows ME and finally began wri­ting an Ode to Michael Dell. They would not give me Win­dows XP, den­ying that ME was uns­ta­ble and a crappy pro­gram.
    So, my com­pu­ter crashed and the tech ins­ta­lled XP with the new Hard Drive.
    Now, when I tried to down­load upda­tes, they noti­fied me that I can­not obtain them because it is not regis­te­red, that I should con­tact Mic­ro­soft and I guess, pay them a fee! Oh yeah, you can­not win with Dell or Mic­ro­soft, can you?
    So, I am repu­blishing all 16 poems.

  8. howarde says:
    September 2, 2005 at 9:42 am

    Oh yes, at http://www.dell-hell.blogspot.com
    (With your per­mis­sion, of course, sir.)