Dell Cited InFaulty Component Cover-Up « Fly News | Hollywood Gossip

Posted by Brad On June - 30 - 2010

Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit indicate that Dell attempted to cover-up widespread component failures which affected a number of its OptiPlex computers from May 2003 to July 2005.According to Ashlee Vance of the New York Times, Dell shipped at least 11.8 million computers that were at risk of failing due to faulty capacitors manufactured by an Asian PC component supplier known as Nichicon.

Dell sold millions of these computers from 2003 to 2005 to major companies like Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, institutions like the Mayo Clinic and small businesses.“The funny thing was that every one of them went bad at the same time,” said Greg Barry, the president of PointSolve, a technology services company near Philadelphia that had bought dozens. “It’s unheard-of, but Dell didn’t seem to recognize this as a problem at the time.”

“Capacitors are found on computer motherboards, playing a crucial role in the flow of current across the hardware. They are not meant to pop and leak fluid, but that is exactly what was happening earlier this decade,” wrote Vance.”A Dell study found that OptiPlex computers affected by the bad capacitors were expected to cause problems up to 97 percent of the time over a three-year period. And, making problems worse, Dell replaced faulty motherboards with other faulty motherboards.”

Unsurprisingly, employees routinely “went out of their way” to conceal the capacitor meltdowns, with one Dell rep even going so far as ordering others to “avoid all language” about bad boards or related “issues.”

“They were fixing bad computers with bad computers and were misleading customers at the same time,” explained Ira Winkler, a former computer analyst for the National Security Agency and a technology consultant.

“They knew millions of computers would be out there causing inevitable damage and were not giving people an opportunity to fix that damage.”

To counter lingering bad impressions, Dell salespeople were told to emphasize that the company’s direct model allowed it to identify and fix problems faster than competitors.

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