Documents show that Dell knowingly sold defective computers, misled those needing support
By Tim Stevens 
posted June 30th 2010 8:07AM
posted June 30th 2010 8:07AM
According to recently released documents stemming from a three year-old lawsuit, Dell not only knew about the bogus components but some of its employees were actively told to play dumb, one memo sent to customer service reps telling them to "avoid all language indicating the boards were bad or had issues." Meanwhile, sales teams were still selling funky OptiPlex machines, which during that period had a 97 percent failure rate according to Dell's own study. (And you thought the Xbox 360 had problems.) With that on the minds of shoppers, plus Throttlegate and some other recent laptop quality issues, we have to think consumer confidence for Dell must be at an all-time low at the moment.
[Image courtesy of Bushtails]
3 words: use Japanese caps
@unseen
Well, just use solid-state caps from anywhere.
This problem occurred on ALL of our Optiplex SX270's and a select few Optiplex SX280's... The fact that they knew about it is pretty poor. Thankfully they extended warranty on the motherboard to 5 years from 2.
@Azlew
I've seen this issue all the way up to the Optiplex GX620's and a small number of the Optiplex 745 models. But I have shit loads of GX270's and GX280's motherboards that never made it to the Dell swap program. Depending who your sells rep was at Dell, they were able to send you replacement boards that were recapped and certified by Dell back in early 2000 to 2006. I worked at two major hospitals who got stuck with this issue on the Optiplex line. I'm sure allot more Hospitals and big enterprises also dealt with this issue. But it's not just Dell who got hit with this bad caps issue, HP, Sony, Apple.
But on Dell's defense, they exchanged boards, no questions asked, usally shipped next day.
This is one reason why I build my own. Feel sorry for organisations and their IT policies.
@RampantNinja
Didn't matter if you built your own computer or bought it online, this issue hit all board manufactures. I've had the issue with MSI, AOpen, FoxConn, it happen on three different ECS boards I've owned and built from the board up. You won't see the issue come up right away until after several hours of use or more. Check out www.badcaps.net I've used their service many times for recaps.
@marco916 Japanese caps on Asus or Gigabyte boards now.
and people ask me why i don't like dell
Hmm.. They won't get sued for this will they? I have DELL stock =[
(which has only been making me lose money I admit)
OMG and here i am.... with a very low trust rate towards Dell after reading this!
I was waiting for there Absolutely beautifil designed phones to come out so i can pick one as my next phone.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/22/dells-lightning-thunder-flash-smoke-and-more-a-roundup/3#c28325988
but a company that denies its failure to its customers and even tries to cover it all up when support is being asked is just what i call a company that isn't worth your hard earned money no matter how good the features are on paper.
If they could behave in that way once there's no doubt that they would do it again when something else goes wrong.
hey i remember this story
about the phones that have defects yet the company...
oh wait
I have to give props out to http://www.badcaps.net for recapping many boards for me and others. You best place for recaps unless you do it yourself.
how are we bringing up phones in an article like this?!
absurd.
I used to work as a customer service rep, and I couldn't imagine how you'd not tell the customer what they bought was junk/defective. I would love to read their spiel.
Its faster/cheeper to replace the capacitors yourself we have done hundreds of boards at my school and we saved tens of thousands of dollars. dell wanted $250 for refurbed boards, we could do about 20 repairs for that price. TheCapKing.com is the best place I have found but badcaps.net is a close second.
My HD failed on a Dell I used at work (an OptiPlex no less). It's under warranty so I call it in and they ship me another one. I open the package and it's a refurbished hd - it wasn't even sealed in anti-static and it has this big sticking stating this. It took a lot of arguing but they finally shipped me a new drive.
Who would trust a refurbished hd?
A few years ago, a Dell Precision workstation at work (just over 3 years old), started having issues of shutting down, BSOD.
I spent 3 days trying to figure out what was going on, including talking and emailing back and forth with customer support, which was US-based. Did a complete reformat and reinstall. Still the problem wouldn't go away, so I figure it had to be hardware, but which one?
I ran memory tests, fan tests, everything. Finally, I decided why not just open up the damned thing and look closer? So I did so, and there it was...capacitors leaked. I emailed customer support, but hardware warranty had just expired. We trashed that computer because it would have cost over $300 to replace the mother board.
Now that this story had come up on NYT (which I read yesterday), it's quite disappointing that Dell treated its customers this way, ignoring the faulty component that was clearly on their end of things, using a bad supplier.
C'mon Dell, I bought 3 computers from you, and steered my workplace to buy a workstation from you. How could you do this to me?
Thanks for making it clear that this was not a Dell-specific issue and that the lawsuit folks are talking about is three years old.
In situations where systems did fail due to the Nichicon capacitor issue, we worked directly with many customers to resolve. We also extended the warranty of impacted machines until January 2008, several years after they were purchased.
More to come soon on a Direct2Dell post...
@LionelatDell
You know what? TOO LATE. This wasn't happening yesterday; these problems cropped up over 3 years ago.
@LionelatDell you are full of crap.
@LionelatDell
We asked for extensions to the warranties in 2005 and were refused. Even so, we're 2 years past what we would have gotten, and I'm still replacing boards. I don't blame Dell for the problem, just for sticking their collective heads up their asses and trying to ignore it for so long.
@LionelatDell you failed to mention the fact that tech support representatives were instructed to inform the customers that there was "no known issue", after story had already broke.
It made a bunch of tech support folks not only look pretty dumb but fell pretty dumb when the Directors should have been leading by example and being honest. Whether this was an industry-wide issue or Dell-specific issue is not the case here, and your remarks do not negate the fact that Dell knowingly informed it's employees to lie to it's customers. This is fact.
This article is simply craptastic. I worked through the escalations of thousands of opti 270 / 280 cap issues. Dell spent hundreds of millions on respun motherboards and shipped them out to customers next business day without much hassle. Because of the scope of the issue and type of warranty structure in place, replacements were on a fail by fail basis but techs were sent out to resolve the issue within 24 hours. yes they were abundant and yes they were failing as mentioned, but we extended the warranties on those motherboards for an additional 3 years and stood by our replacement policy. tech support staff were basicly instructed to not argue with the customer once engineering determined the issue to be systemic... and its not like this was a secret to anyone in the IT world.
A typical phone call went like this:
Customer: I have the cap issue on 20 machines, please send board NBD.
Dell: On its way.
I work in the field now doing large scale deployments for dell and guess what are just now being replaced in almost every office in america? the opti-270 and 280s from 2004-2005. Despite its MB issues, the computer is still around in offices and just now about to finally retire.
@us3rnayme that is crap. my dell 5150 (while in 6 month warranty) went through 3 motherboards, 4 video cards, a wireless card, 2 hard drives, and a new keyboard. after the warranty period, dell NEVER contacted me (although I spent countless hours trying to contact them) about any type of warranty extension. the customer service reps wouldn't even deal with me because my machine was out of warranty and they misled time after time. i'm glad they treated their corporate customers so much better, but you obviously weren't on the receiving end of this dell garbage.
@urbancorn
i cant comment on the dell 5150 because i never supported home and small business customers. the issue this article refers to is specific to a different model and was very well known.
i can say though that every part you just listed off was manufactured by a vendor partner who sold those same parts to all of our competitors. Computers are prone to a number of elements which make them vulnerable to being inoperable. by your own admission, everytime you had an issue under warranty, you received replacement parts from Dell.
We sell all kinds of warranties for a reason and in my opinion offer some of the best in the industry. to only protect your purchase for 6 months might not have been the best strategy.
@us3rnayme
Dell wasn't always so helpful. My Dell Account Rep informed me that Dell was "unaware of any problems" in the Spring of 2005, long after the problem was evident. Only after I pointed him to several websites detailing the problem did he admit it.
I'm still support GX240/GX260/GX270/GX280 machines, and still replacing boards, some for the third time.
@us3rnayme Don't forget to mention the fact that i think some of the Dell boards which were returned as bad/defective but showed no signs of bad/defective were still sent back into the field two and three times in some instances to replace boards that WERE showing signs of "the bulge".
Of course i think that was to make SLA on a field service call so it didn't matter if Dell replaced it several times, as long as their Field SLA was met. i think that's what their services dept and field techs cared about.
@JackInLA Recap them yourself and you will be done with them. The Dell referbs only last a year or two. Rubycon MCZ or even a polymer cap replacement if the machines are in a hot room will last as long as you care to use the PCs. Try thecapking or badcaps for the Rubys.
Old News!??? Are they STILL selling bad computers with bad caps? I work with Dell computers all the time and the ones they replaced a few years ago are now suffering the same fate...which are now out of warranty. We suspected they gave us bad parts to replace the bad parts when caps started failing again... But re-soldering bad caps is not a huge deal.
Big question here is whether they're still doing this crap??
@bonedog73
i can assure you the answer is no. just from a common sense approach, what company hit with hundreds of millions of dollars in damages would take the same ill fated manufacturing approach again? there were industry wide lessons learned from that event. but does that mean that a capacitor will never fail again on a dell product? of course not.
look at the iphone 4 antenae for example. you could make the argument that the iphone 4 is cheaply manufactured and that corners were cut, but they werent. things just happen with unintended consequence. but its going to make people angry regardless.
there will always be defects in technology and when there are, they typically appear in large volume batches before the issue is addressed so the scope of the issue will invariably damage the company image. thats business though and to Michael Dells credit, he stepped back in as CEO right about the time this issue was major news.
Well, if this were an Apple product Steve would simply state that you should plug it in differently.
With the bad press Dell got over this - you have to know they're not still pushing out motherboards with this issue. We had literally hundreds of Optiplex units, GX240s, GX260s and GX270s and this was only a problem for the GX270s. We've also had many laptops from Dell without issues, plus I've dealt with Dell servers and Dimension desktops too - none have had this problem the GX270s had. Dell was also VERY responsive to replace the defective motherboards with a simple phone call - even after the warranties expired for a time. Like someone else said, this was YEARS ago, and it is being treated as new news. It's old news, Dell has recovered and it appears someone has an axe to grind.
Hmm. I'm getting second thoughts on that Dell streak I was considering buying.
I will never buy a Dell laptop again after what I've experienced with my girlfriend's Dell.
@kpenning maybe you should get a different girlfriend. =oP
Ah, the memories of busted capacitors in my Dell GX270s....it seems like only yesterday....oh, wait, it was. I'm still dealing with this issue.
My employer ordered about 100 GX260, GX270 and GX280's from 2003-2004 for my location. One year into the warranty on the GX270's the caps were poppin' left and right. Our Dell Account Rep actually said to me in an email, "We aren't aware of any issues with capacitors in these". I took a picture of a mobo with several popped caps, along with several links to websites that had information on the problem, with the reply, "Then you are the only ones that aren't aware of it". They did ship cases of boards and sent a tech to do the remaining replacements.
By the fall of 2005 all of the GX270's had new motherboards. But, as I have since discovered, they are defective as well. This time they took longer to show up, and the GX260's and GX280's are joining them. Not a week goes by that I don't have to swap a motherboard. And the power supplies are failing as well now. One revision just dies, in the other the fan stops and cooks the power supply and the chip on the board that it's close to. I keep motherboards and power supplies in stock now.
Funny thing, we ordered some boards from one supplier, and when I got them in I looked them over and discovered they were failed boards that someone had scraped the electrolyte off of the tops of the caps and pushed them back down flat. I could see a hole in the tops and the scratch marks. Needless to say we returned them for a refund.
To be fair, I've seen 2 HP Compaq's, several Lenovo's and even a PC from MSI with bad caps as well. I have even seen a computer monitor suffering from them.
When I first started looking into the problem, the story was that the electrolyte was contaminated by the disinfectants used to combat SARS. Then the story changed that the caps were counterfeit and the formula for the dielectric was incorrect. I'm not sure which if either is really true.
A conspiracy theorist might conclude someone had set out to sabotage the world's computer systems.
yucky!
Just one of the reasons why I build my own computers....
@Ahslan
...which were also affected by the same problem. The difference is there's no warranty on what you build yourself, unless you count CompUSA's you-can-return-it-within-7-days-but-we'll-still-harass-you policy.
I got a lot of heat myself for putting together some computers with MSI MB's which had some of these bad caps. The caps would bust a nut within a year, oozing all over the MB. Then I'd get blamed for building a shoddy product.
@Larz
So almost all companies during this period had problems cuz they were cheaping out?!? Cuz I dont remember having issues like these...but it could be because I never purchased any MSI boards....or that I got lucky...lol...
For folks who are interested, I just published my post about the Nichicon capacitor issue here: http://bit.ly/dbYJWB.
Companies using crappy Chinese caps is not a new story and is still going on now. From TVs to CB radios I see tons of failed Chinese junk. Usually you can pick these up for cheap at ewaste companies, replace a couple caps and you have a better than new device. That’s how I got my 40inch LCD.
Samsung LCD TVs and Dell monitors: http://thecapking.com/lcdrepair.html
Pretty lame... but then again, this is pretty much par for the course. These big companies do this stuff all the time.
Fantastic example of irresponsible journalism. - - I'm sick of people repeating the wrong information and getting paid for misleading people. - - - The famous stolen incomplete formula / defective electrolyte issue -ONLY- affected capacitors manufactured by -some- companies in Taiwan and China. - Dell PC's did have capacitor issues however the affected Dell computers did NOT use ANY capacitors manufactured in Taiwan or China. - NONE! ZERO! - - - The two stories are true but COMPLETELY unrelated. - - - - Dell PC's suffered from defective Japanese capacitors [Nichicon HN and HM series] which were overfilled due to tech doc error. [Overfilled is not the same as a bad formula.] - Nichicon NEVER used the defective electrolyte formula that was on the market in Taiwan. In fact, Nichicon manufactures their own electrolyte. They don't buy someone else's to use. - - - This was fully known by mid/late 2004 so the reporter that wrote this is 6 years out of date. - - - I've been an electronics tech since 1981 and I've been repairing motherboards at the component level since 1998. Replacing caps [including on Dells] is a large part of what I do. - - - On top of the HN and HM problems Dells in small form factor cases continue to have problems [at least until GX620] but, as before, these Dells use 100% Japanese made capacitors. The problem in the small cases is excessive heat which can damage ANY brand of capacitor. - - -
Another misconception is that the "capacitor plague" is a single problem. - The truth is it a sundry of about 10 completely unrelated problems. - Impure Aluminum in Chinese and Taiwan caps. - The famous defective formula. - The defective Nichicon HN/HM from 2001-2004. - Chemicon KZG and KZJ heat failures even in normal PC cases. - Small case overheating issues. - Counterfeits [big time on eBay]- Fake Polymers on video cards and motherboards [Sacon FZ series] - 85ºC rated caps used where 105ºC rated should be. - probably some more I've forgotten right now. - - - One or more of these problems has effected EVERY motherboard manufacture and EVERY system builder. [Dell, HP, Apple, Gateway, E-machines, everyone...]