

WTF is up with Dell? - mmaunder
http://markmaunder.com/2009/wtf-is-up-with-dell/

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blhack
On the stupid smirking idiot appearing in your emails:

It's marketing. They don't understand that you don't give two shits how much
smiling is going on in your email. The marketeers are used to doing mass
marketing to people who want $300 workstations for their houses, not people
interested in buying some server hardware that they'll hopefully never see
after it goes into the rack.

They don't get that no matter how many smiling guys in suits they put in your
email, it isn't going to change the hardware your asking about. These people
seriously believe that if they show you crappy hardware with a smiling silk-
tie-guy, you'll be happy to buy it because the silk-tie-guy gives you a good
feeling when you see it, and you associate that good feeling with the crappy
hardware.

Sorry, ranting; we just got a new batch of marketing drones at my job who want
to spam the living-hell out of our customers with this sort of garbage. I've
been arguing with them back and forth about it for the last few days and I'm
not making any progress.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
What you're saying makes _sense_ , but I'd like to see the data. In a split
test of that email and one without the guy, which would win?

Sadly, I bet it would be the one with the guy.

~~~
SamAtt
I remember a survey that said essentially that (I tried for a couple minutes
to find the link but I can't).

I forget the actual numbers in the study but my recollection was that the
number of people who read an e-mail with a picture of a smiling person on it
was significantly higher. They attributed this to a couple factors...

1\. When you differentiate people tend to pause. So someone going through 20
e-mails of all text will pause on the one with a picture for no other reason
than it's different.

2\. People tend to reflect emotion from other people and a picture can trigger
that to a lesser extent. This is a well established psychological tendency
that people have. Imagine yourself walking up to a group of your friends who
are all laughing at something. Even without knowing what they are laughing at
you'll instinctively start to smile. Same concept.

Hence the theory that people are more likely to read an e-mail with a smiling
person's picture.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> So someone going through 20 e-mails of all text will pause on the one with a
> picture for no other reason than it's different.

So when every other marketing email has a picture of a recently-laid soul
patch guy, it will make sense to send plain text again?

~~~
SamAtt
The irony of my comment above is that I'm just the opposite. A picture of any
kind embedded in the content is usually my cue to move along.

~~~
blhack
Mine too. In fact, I think that there is even a filter for spamassassin that
marks emails with embedded images as "spammy".

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lsc
how come dell doesn't automate the quote process? I don't want to fuck around
with a salesguy, just tell me what it fucking costs.

This is half the reason I build my own servers. It's impossible to decide what
tradeoffs to make when the true cost of those tradeoffs is hidden behind some
sales asshole.

~~~
antonovka
I love up-front non-predatory pricing. I hate wasting my time with
salespeople, though sometimes you can work out a better deal with them.

My preferred vendor is Silicon Mechanics: <http://www.siliconmechanics.com/>

They sell SuperMicro equipment, they list prices, estimated power draw, etc,
all up-front. You can add machines to your shopping cart, checkout, and you're
done.

They've always provided us with fantastic customer service, and stepped up to
replace/repair anything that didn't work right, even if the cause wasn't
entirely clear (such as a hard drive issue that could have been OS related,
but turned out to be a Seagate firmware issue).

~~~
absconditus
Dell does provide prices on their website. You can pull out your credit card
and buy a server without talking to anyone. The purpose of a quote is to
negotiate a better price.

~~~
antonovka
_The purpose of a quote is to negotiate a better price._

I know, which is why I said exactly that in my post =)

That said, I prefer vendors that simply charge everyone the same reasonable
price, rather than having such a large profit margin that they can afford to:

1) Pay a sales team to finagle over quotes.

2) Slash their prices on demand.

Obviously, things are a bit different when you're buying in truly massive
quantities.

~~~
raintrees
Dell's process has always had that "car salesman" feel... I can get you a
better price - Let me talk to my boss.

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elblanco
This sounds like one of those future management case studies everybody will
learn about in business classes in a few years. "Why did Dell fail? Well, they
sacked all their sales people and nobody could buy their product!"

I remember studying one of those. Can't remember the company off the top of my
head, some retail electronics outfit. They sacked all their senior sales
people on the floor to save money and ended up going out of business because
people could find anybody to help them adequately when they were in the store
with money.

~~~
mbreese
That was what happened to Circuit City.

~~~
elblanco
I think that was the one.

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KevinMS
I bought a couple 1U servers from dell. Since none of my credit cards would go
over a few thousand for a single purchase I called Dell up to ask if I could
send them a check. I got transferred 12 times! I'm not kidding you, I was
counting. Eventually, when I got to 13, I couldn't understand a word the guy
was saying so I just hung up.

During those transfers they asked if I was charging them to my companies
account. I couldn't believe how easily they were going to allow me to charge a
personal purchase to the place they were going to be delivered.

Eventually I found out that their web interface allowed you to split a
purchase over a few credit cards. Few years later they are still running with
zero problems. Get them with DRAC, its great.

Bottom line is, if you are buying from Dell, either you are a "Dude, I'm
getting dell guy", or a company with an account. If you are just buying a few
rackmount servers, dont fit a profile and can get serious hassles.

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dasil003
Is this what the world has come to? I need to get a semi-popular blog just to
get human customer service?

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protomyth
Dell told the community college I am sys-admining for that we couldn't buy the
special, we had to buy on GSA pricing (not educational since we are on Tribal
land). The $499 package became $999 and it took weeks to find out why we were
not considered an education institution.

Needless to say, we went elsewhere.

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lloydarmbrust
I hate talking to sales people--that's why I buy reconditioned Dells from
websites that publish their prices.

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ComputerGuru
May I ask how this qualifies as news? Or how it even affects anyone other than
the original poster?

I mean, the dude's marketing agent was laid off and the new guy didn't do as
good of a job (or the emails didn't reach). And?

~~~
dschobel
Maybe this story is riding the coat-tails of the AA story about how "big
companies just don't get it". Who knows.

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jason_slack
I can't recall the last time I ordered a pre-built server from anywhere. I
build my own. I know the cost, no gimmicks, no countless e-mails back and
forth with sales people. Done on my time frame and my budget.

~~~
trezor
I think the last PC I bothered to build myself was a Pentium 4 some ages ago.

Since then I've decided that the two pennies (or otherwise insignificant
amount) I save building myself is not worth the time it takes to assemble it,
not to mention keeping up to date on current HW trends, configurations,
sockets, power supplies, mobos etc etc.

Pretty much all hardware these days are technically overspec'ed compared to
the load I can put on them, so as long as your needs are not high-end, pretty
much any moderately modern Xeon should do.

I just buy a preconfigured setup from Dell, it just works, and at worst I'll
buy some extra RAM and drives elsewhere later.

Maybe that's not how you like it, but for me it means zero hassles, zero work
and a guarantee which is for the system as a whole working unit, not just
single components. I couldn't be happier, and the days of building systems
myself is definitely over.

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mmaunder
Sorry, have to take my server down quick. Getting DoS'd with the HN visits.
Back up in a few minutes after reconfig to make it a little faster. :(

~~~
webwright
You host your own blog? WordPress.com is your friend. Get on the cloud, man!
:-)

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antidaily
Crazier than not getting a response from a Dell salesperson... describing that
stock photo guy with the soul patch as cute.

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themanual
check your spam / junk folder!

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jodrellblank
I've been chasing Dell for two weeks about an order. Two people from here have
spoken to nine different Dell people over four call centers between us and
emailed five Dell people three or more times each and still going nowhere.

All I needed to do was write a grumbly blog post and they'd sort it out within
3 hours? Why did nobody tell me!

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dnsworks
Mark,

In the past you have flowed about the wonders (price) of Dell on the Seattle
tech startups mailing list. One stumble in the relationship, and you're
telling the world how awful they are. You even went so far as to publically
mock the appearance of your Dell sales rep. This type of public bullying might
not produce the desired outcome. That is, if your desired outcome is to get a
good price on your server and maintain a relationship with your vendor.

Sales reps are human beings, fallible and fraught with human problems. Perhaps
your rep came down with a certain flu and forgot to tell his/her customers who
their secondary is. As a customer of Dell, I keep all of my "sales team"'s
contacts in a text file, for this very reason. (For the record, I hate dealing
with Dell, and choose HP or Sun whenever I have the option.)

If you feel Dell is untrustworthy, consider moving on. HP and Sun are superior
alternatives who are willing to match Dell's price. You just need to know how
to work the channels (for HP call up CDW, for Sun look for Tim Van Loan).
Also, Supermicro resellers like Silicon Mechanics, PogoLinux, or Penguin
Computers sell servers comparable to Dell's crappy commodity hardware, and
will likely beat Dell's server offerings.

From an infrastructure management point of view, your model is broken if you
cannot afford a few extra days in provisioning. Consider multiple suppliers,
or rethinking the model. Cloud and Dedicated server models are designed
towards infrastructures that require rapid resource provisioning.

~~~
juliusdavies
"Publically mock the appearance of your Dell sales rep?" That's gotta be a
stock photo. Can a Dell sales rep even afford that tie, let alone that hair
cut?

~~~
dasil003
Can he get laid?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

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va_coder
I love systems76.com new thin Lemur laptop with Ubuntu

forget Dell

