Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Kudos To Dell On Handling Of Axim 2003 Issue
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THOUGHT" @ 01:00 AM
When an OEM blows it, we all get outraged, be it a customer service issue, not providing ROM updates, discontinuing support for a device, whatever. Someone from the Thoughts team puts it on the front page and we all vent for pages and pages. And sometimes even more pages. 8O
So I think it is equally fair to give credit where credit is due when a company steps up and rectifies an issue in a top notch way. On June 14, CNet News reported that some users were complaining about performance issues on the X5 with the new OS on it. These were coming from Dell's Support Forums and other enthusiast sites like this one and AximSite. Dell's official response at that time? "Dell representatives said on Monday morning that the Round Rock, Texas-based company was aware of the concerns stated online by Axim users and is investigating these. However, they added it had not received any formal complaints from Axim owners through its tech support service."
Fair enough. Dell too was monitoring the situation, but hadn't found any issues yet. Apparently no one cared enough to actually call Dell on this. Dell's support forums are hosted by Dell, just like the microsoft.* usenet hierarchy is hosted by Microsoft, but that is not an official support channel. You have to call an 800 number for that. Even so, Dell was already on the case. In fact, they were looking into this last week due to the reports in the forums.
Two days later, Dell found the problem and immediately came forward with what they knew to that point and a plan of action. Microsoft was also involved in this. Microsoft had just released a new OS and probably didn't care where the problem was, just that it be identified and fixed. It turns out the problem was in the firmware that Dell provides, which lies between the Microsoft OS and the hardware.
Dell had several options here.
• Bury their heads in the sand and see how loud the noise got. I can think of a few OEMs that have done this in the past. One denied their 16 bit color display was actually 12 bits. I don't recall if they reversed course before or after the class action suit was filed, but it never should have gotten that far. Another PDA manufacturer did this when they got reports that their cradles were frying motherboards on computers because of an electrical discharge. Again, it got to class action status before it was over.
• They could have pretended nothing was wrong, fixed internally, slipstreamed the fix and then handled complaints on an individual basis. In the end, the user gets what they paid for, but it sure is a hassle.
• Fix the problem and make the fix available for download quitely.
• Shut down the plant until the new firmware is ready to go, let the media know what is going on and assure 100% of existing owners that the problem will be rectified.
The further down that list you go, the more expensive it gets for the company but the better it is for the consumer and end user. Dell chose the latter. Few here would have complained if they just fixed it and made it available for download, but Dell didn't want anyone else to have to mess with this, so they have halted shipments temporarily.
I'll also give Dell the benefit of the doubt that their quality control testing will test for scenarios like this in the future so it doesn't happen again. I doubt a service pack at Microsoft goes by that the QC phase doesn't get a few dozen tests added to it to prevent the introduction of new bugs in the next service pack, so I hope Dell's QC department has learned how to make their process more effective from this.
Kudos to Dell on their handling of this situation!
So I think it is equally fair to give credit where credit is due when a company steps up and rectifies an issue in a top notch way. On June 14, CNet News reported that some users were complaining about performance issues on the X5 with the new OS on it. These were coming from Dell's Support Forums and other enthusiast sites like this one and AximSite. Dell's official response at that time? "Dell representatives said on Monday morning that the Round Rock, Texas-based company was aware of the concerns stated online by Axim users and is investigating these. However, they added it had not received any formal complaints from Axim owners through its tech support service."
Fair enough. Dell too was monitoring the situation, but hadn't found any issues yet. Apparently no one cared enough to actually call Dell on this. Dell's support forums are hosted by Dell, just like the microsoft.* usenet hierarchy is hosted by Microsoft, but that is not an official support channel. You have to call an 800 number for that. Even so, Dell was already on the case. In fact, they were looking into this last week due to the reports in the forums.
Two days later, Dell found the problem and immediately came forward with what they knew to that point and a plan of action. Microsoft was also involved in this. Microsoft had just released a new OS and probably didn't care where the problem was, just that it be identified and fixed. It turns out the problem was in the firmware that Dell provides, which lies between the Microsoft OS and the hardware.
Dell had several options here.
• Bury their heads in the sand and see how loud the noise got. I can think of a few OEMs that have done this in the past. One denied their 16 bit color display was actually 12 bits. I don't recall if they reversed course before or after the class action suit was filed, but it never should have gotten that far. Another PDA manufacturer did this when they got reports that their cradles were frying motherboards on computers because of an electrical discharge. Again, it got to class action status before it was over.
• They could have pretended nothing was wrong, fixed internally, slipstreamed the fix and then handled complaints on an individual basis. In the end, the user gets what they paid for, but it sure is a hassle.
• Fix the problem and make the fix available for download quitely.
• Shut down the plant until the new firmware is ready to go, let the media know what is going on and assure 100% of existing owners that the problem will be rectified.
The further down that list you go, the more expensive it gets for the company but the better it is for the consumer and end user. Dell chose the latter. Few here would have complained if they just fixed it and made it available for download, but Dell didn't want anyone else to have to mess with this, so they have halted shipments temporarily.
I'll also give Dell the benefit of the doubt that their quality control testing will test for scenarios like this in the future so it doesn't happen again. I doubt a service pack at Microsoft goes by that the QC phase doesn't get a few dozen tests added to it to prevent the introduction of new bugs in the next service pack, so I hope Dell's QC department has learned how to make their process more effective from this.
Kudos to Dell on their handling of this situation!
