Dealing With Dell

by Bob Seidel

A faithful reader pointed out that I had left out another high speed Internet service provider in the area - if you have Atlantic Telephone, they offer DSL at about $40/month and a service tech. installs in. Sorry for the omission.

A client who had a hard time with Dell service prompted me for this week's column. Now, before we start dumping on Dell and other PC companies, we need to understand their position. Not to condone it, just to understand it.

First of all, profit margins in the PC business are notoriously low. I am not sure that IBM ever actually made dollar one directly from that business that they started in 1981. They are trying now to sell their entire PC business to another company. Because of low profits, any long service call or parts replacement can eat up the entire profit of a sale. Obviously, companies are reluctant to let that happen.

Secondly, many of the problems we see are software problems. The crushing weight of viruses, spam, spyware, etc. can bring a PC to its knees, but this is not the fault of the manufacturer. But since a call to the manufacturer is usually free, that is where many people start. This overwhelms the call lines.

So I get a call from a new client who had a notebook computer that was running very slowly. My assumption was that it was going to be a typical spyware disinfection job. I get there and first noticed that even the boot process was very slow - this is not usually the case with spyware, as the spyware isn't in control until much later in the boot cycle. I ran the usual spyware checkers (Adaware and Spybot) but they didn't find much of a serious nature. Now, it's getting interesting.

Processor utilization was a solid 100%, but no single program or process was using anywhere near that much. Also, there was a huge amount of hard drive activity. After spending about 1.5 hours trying to find the rogue program or process, I decided that the best way to guarantee a fix was to reinstall Windows. But, the reinstall itself ran very, very slowly with a lot of repetitive hard drive activity. Conclusion: bad hard drive. Since the unit was under warranty, I recommended that they call Dell, prompted them as to what would happen, and left. I usually don't hang around wasting my client's money.

But the conversation with Dell didn't go very well. Besides the (now standard) language barrier, the tech managed to maneuver my client into believing that it wasn't a bad HD, but couldn't recommend a fix. If you ever have to deal with your manufacturer on a problem, here are a few tips.

Do as much analysis as you can before hand. Try eliminating some resident programs (using MSCONFIG), run a good virus checker and spyware checker. If you can swap a component with another PC, do so. This will not matter to the manufacturer, but will help you steer them properly.

If you can't understand the service person (or if they can't understand you) don't hesitate to ask for another person or the next level of support. There is just no sense in arguing with someone who doesn't understand you!

Then, try to keep them focused. They will go through a canned diagnostic procedure, but cut it short if it is not leading in the proper direction. In my client's case, the slowdown could not be a Windows software problem, as Windows itself does not running during a reinstall and yet it was still slow. So there would be no sense in playing around with Windows parameters or settings.

When all else fails, insist on what you think is the solution. If you think you have a bad hard drive, keep demanding that until they firmly refuse, and then escalate up the chain. The worst thing that can happen is that it might not be what you thought, but hopefully the person they send out can fix the problem anyhow.

I know that dealing with tech. support can be frustrating - but don't let them overcome you.

Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.