Dell might have made efforts to hide problems with its machines after all, according to recently unsealed court records. The
New York Times went through hundreds of documents related to the lawsuit that Advanced Internet Technologies brought against Dell, and found that Dell knew much more about its computer problems than it let on, all while continuing to sell the machines to the public. Dell settled the lawsuit earlier this year, but the revelation is troubling.
This lawsuit goes back to 2007, when Advanced Internet Technologies accused Dell of making efforts to conceal known defects in its desktop machines. The suit was settled in September of this year, though the companies did not disclose the terms of the agreement. A federal judge unsealed the documents on Thursday, however, revealing that much more was going on behind the scenes.
For example, the Times says that Dell conducted a study in 2004 and concluded that a minimum of 12 percent of its SX270 Optiplex machines would have problems over three years (the same study also included the GX270). The company eventually raised that minimum expectation to 45 percent later that year, with the possibility of the failure rate reaching as high as 97 percent.
Despite this, Dell apparently encouraged its salespeople and technicians to not let customers know about known defects, and said internally that most customers (those who had not bought more than 50 machines) would be subject to "fix on fail"that is, the company would only help them when their machines broke down. An internal presentation on the Optiplex GX and SX270 acknowledges that the company had discovered "quality issues," but that employees should not proactively bring them to customers' attention.
The company eventually ended up fixing 22 percent of the 21 million Optiplex machines it sold between 2003 and 2005about 4.6 million computersbefore settling the lawsuit this year.
Dell insists that its computer (and repair) problems are now in the past. Still, Dell's decisions during that period of time may color customers' expectations.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
