Re: Third-party Anythings not permitted in Dell's
On 6 Feb 2010, at 15:40, Linda A. Walsh wrote: > ... -- I suspect the writing is on > the wall for them and they are trying to squeeze more blood out of > customers > to stave off the inevitable. That is a really poor outlook as it > only > means they've given up trying to compete in the free market and think > they need to use these underhanded methods in order to compete now. The crazy thing is that we'd happy pay a little bit more for their systems, were Dell to go along a "do no evil" path. We looked at Solaris a while back, before the death of Sun seemed obvious to us. It took time & effort contacting them, and (IIRC) weeks to actually find a reseller who would talk to us. Their hardware was at least 50% more expensive than Dell equivalent, and for that we had to join a "start up club" to get these discounted prices. The hassle of dealing with Sun was obviously not worth it - not compared to clicking "order" on Dell's website - but the totally open- source nature of Solaris was quite appealing. We'd have gladly paid a 20% premium. Disk caddies should be readily available as a separate item for less than £50. £35 seems quite fair to me - at £50 I'd be thinking "well, i don't have any choice", but to supply disk caddies *only* with the disks does indeed seem like fleecing. Another Dell peeve: telephone sales reps. I don't want a discount and a 0.2ghz faster processor from phoning up to place the order. I just want you to put the right price on the website in the first place. The appeal of Dell is that the ordering process should be simple & straight-forward. If I have to haggle with the salesman, how do I know I'm getting the best price? I know you only gave him the authority to negotiate with me, Dell, because you're trying to "upsell me" and rip me off. We extended the warranty on a server a couple of years ago - it had been bought with 3 years service, and we wanted to extend to 5 years. This would have cost us only an extra couple of hundred quid if we'd bought the 5 years in the first place. The salesman quoted me about £1300 in the first instance, about as much as we'd paid for the server in the first place! This was my first experience of Dell haggling, so I just fell off my chair - "that can't be right; can I speak to someone in the UK instead, please?". They dropped to £800 and then to £300 using phrases like "special price for you" and "I'll just check with my manager" and this was when I realised that I was being bullshitted (sorry, I've done this sort of stuff myself in my own shady past). Secondhand models of this server were going on eBay for less than they were quoting me for the warranty extension, and I had to explain repeatedly that there was no point in us buying warranty coverage if it was cheaper to buy a whole spare server (just stick it in the corner of the server room and forget about it - problem solved). Aside: I'm sorry, but I just can't relate to blatantly Indian telephone reps. However well you train them, and however good they are, my expectations are tainted by all the poor experiences I have with the out-sourced Indian tech-support I've ever had from BT & TalkTalk. Those guys don't understand me, they ask me to reinstall my modem drivers when I've already explained I can see the router's web- page and it says the line's not syncing. Those guys have wasted hours of my time in the past so, I'm sorry, but when I phone up & hear an Indian accent I'm expecting to have a bad experience. When I phone your tech support & speak to a native English speaker or a Euro, I just immediately get a positive feeling in contrast. I've always found IBM's specifications & options obscure, and I don't like having to find a reseller, wondering if I could have got a better deal from a different reseller (but that would incur further days of emailing back & forward). However IBM will get another look if the 3rd- party drive prohibition remains. Stroller. ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: Third-party Anythings not permitted in Dell's
I have this problem all the time with Dell. I tried to buy 2x1TB 7.2k SATAII drives and they quoted me £600!!! I bought them from dabs for £160 and they worked fine. Another time I needed a replacement CD drive in a workstation, they sold me one for £50, just a SATA II CD RW/DVD-ROM, after that I bought one from Overclockers for £20. The list goes on, its disgraceful behaviour, its the kind of thing Micro$hit would/do do. -- Regards, James ;) Samuel Goldwyn - "I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/samuel_goldwyn.html ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: Third-party Anythings not permitted in Dell's
On 2/6/2010 10:40 AM, Linda A. Walsh wrote: > > I got an earful for ordering barebones machines -- Ordered the workstation > equivalent of the 610/710 with same processor. > > But you can't buy a machine that's dual processor ready unless you > buy the processor from them now. They changed to a daughterboard setup > on the workstation, so if you order it with 1 cpu expecting to upgrade > later, you are SOL -- you have to buy a daughterboard from Dell, which, > they won't sell you without a CPU. > > On the disks -- even though the machine has a SAS controller, if you > don't order SAS disks from them they don't send you SAS connectors, but > 2 separate SATA and power connectors that won't connect to a SAS drive. > You need to buy the SAS connector separately from them later on. Used > to be they just had the 1 connector that fit both SAS and SATA, but they > made it so you have to buy SAS up front to get the connectors. > > They are getting real bad on this type of "Dell only" stuff in all areas, > not just servers. Of course they refused to sell the disk caddies > when the new systems came out -- because they were the only ones who had > them at first. They aren't selling PC's anymore, as they are breaking > the PC standards by including proprietary nonsense. They seem to be trying > to go more that direction as time goes on -- I suspect the writing is on > the wall for them and they are trying to squeeze more blood out of customers > to stave off the inevitable. That is a really poor outlook as it only > means they've given up trying to compete in the free market and think > they need to use these underhanded methods in order to compete now. > > When they've lost confidence in their ability to compete on a level playing > field, what does that say about them as a company? > > It's very sad, as I've been a Dell loyalist since the mid 90's. > > -l > > ___ > Linux-PowerEdge mailing list > Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com > https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge > Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq > > > That's a sign of desperation in my book. Now it's not only servers but workstations? Looks like I need to re-evaluate my recommendations. ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
Re: Third-party Anythings not permitted in Dell's
I got an earful for ordering barebones machines -- Ordered the workstation equivalent of the 610/710 with same processor. But you can't buy a machine that's dual processor ready unless you buy the processor from them now. They changed to a daughterboard setup on the workstation, so if you order it with 1 cpu expecting to upgrade later, you are SOL -- you have to buy a daughterboard from Dell, which, they won't sell you without a CPU. On the disks -- even though the machine has a SAS controller, if you don't order SAS disks from them they don't send you SAS connectors, but 2 separate SATA and power connectors that won't connect to a SAS drive. You need to buy the SAS connector separately from them later on. Used to be they just had the 1 connector that fit both SAS and SATA, but they made it so you have to buy SAS up front to get the connectors. They are getting real bad on this type of "Dell only" stuff in all areas, not just servers. Of course they refused to sell the disk caddies when the new systems came out -- because they were the only ones who had them at first. They aren't selling PC's anymore, as they are breaking the PC standards by including proprietary nonsense. They seem to be trying to go more that direction as time goes on -- I suspect the writing is on the wall for them and they are trying to squeeze more blood out of customers to stave off the inevitable. That is a really poor outlook as it only means they've given up trying to compete in the free market and think they need to use these underhanded methods in order to compete now. When they've lost confidence in their ability to compete on a level playing field, what does that say about them as a company? It's very sad, as I've been a Dell loyalist since the mid 90's. -l ___ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
