Dell closing plant as part of 8,800 layoffs
Layoffs hit close to home Monday at Dell, which said it will close its Austin, Texas, desktop manufacturing facility as part of an effort to trim billions in costs.
The Austin facility, which replaced a smaller facility in Austin, is where Dell fine-tuned its "build-to-order" strategy that allowed it to vault ahead of Compaq for the top spot in PCs in the early part of the decade. By not building PCs until orders get placed, Dell minimizes the time it holds components in inventory, which in turn reduces costs. (Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, in fact, doesn't own components until the forklift carrying them crosses a white line on the floor. See our story from a visit to the center here.)
Although still considered a leader in logistics and low-cost manufacturing, Dell began to see its market share erode in 2005 because of complaints about poor customer service, among other factors. Dell is now number two behind Hewlett-Packard (which bought Compaq) in PCs.
Dell also reaffirmed its plans to reduce employee headcount by at least 8,800. So far, it has eliminated 3,200 positions. Overall, the company hopes to reduce expenses by $3 billion a year on average over the next three years.
Dell also has desktop manufacturing facilities in Tennessee and North Carolina.
Frankly, if you treat every customer they way you have treated me, then I am not surprised fewer and fewer people will be willing to do business with you. I've dealt with a lot of companies in my 30+ years in this industry, and yours provided the worst experience ever, bar none; that's a pretty low standard to establish.
Now whats he waiting for?
I'd rather be running successful business that overpaid for service than the other way around anyway.
What's wrong with Dell's customer service? Well it's just like everybody else's.
My friend bought an MP3 player from Dell that was missing components in the packaging. No big deal, just ship it back and have a new one shipped. What does Dell say? They have to pay the shipping costs for Dell's screw up. No no no no no no wrong wrong wrong wrong!!!! Do other companies do this? Yes. Should Dell? Well let's ask Dell how that's working for them?
If something needs shipped back because of a mistake the company made then the company should cover shipping costs.
Every product should have a two year on-site, problem free, everything covered (including shipping) warranty free anyway. If you can't guarantee your product doesn't last at least two years, you have basically just told me you build a crappy product. Do other companies do this? Sure. Isn't that exactly why Dell should not do it? Yes! Freaking idiots!
As many said, they are barking at the wrong tree. Improve your customer service, and I bet you will not need to fire 9K people. Dell was on top at one point, they could be again, but not by taking jobs away from the US and taking those jobs outside.
Has any of you call GoDaddy's customer service. I've only had great experiences talking to people who speak English in the good old U.S. of A. Dell, as well as other companies, should learn from that. I don't want to talk to someone in India whose name is "Jim" or "Scott" or "Pete" who have no idea what they are doing, as it was my experience 3 years ago when talking to Dell's customer service.
Welcome to unemployement Americans.
Thanks to Dell utilizing NAFTA!
Also Dell was too "fixed" on their Build to order model which, despite their logistical genious still made the systems cost more than the "boxed computers' that you could pick up immediately at the closest Circuit City, Best Buy, or wherever.
The nail in the coffin for Dell was when they decided to go after the low low end systems and to afford that market they had to sacrifice their once stellar customer service to offshore facilities where sometimes the customer could not even understand the Dell rep and no one "owned" the problem, rather you would just get bounced back and forth.
I feel very bad for the Dell personnel losing their jobs because the idiots at the top "knew better than their customers" and "Michael Dell wouldn't switch from an ALL INTEL house because they were getting kick backs of up to a Billion (with a 'B') dollars in kick-backs (what Intel calls their customer appreciation and advertising dollars. Yeah right.).
Their standard warranty has gone to one year where it used to be three so what advantage do they have when it is essentially a commodity market with a manufacturer's wrapper?
None.
end for Apple. Of course they were a much smaller company back
then than Dell is now, but where's the talk of Dell's death knell?
As for their customer service, it is bad, but not worse than other companies. Have you called HP's support? You'll get the same kind of idiot answering the phone. Perhaps they even share support staff?
The support staff read scripts. They have a FAQ. They really do not know or understand the technology. They're not well-trained. Oh, and HP's support staff uses Google to find answers
So, what's the real problem? My guess is that people just have not owned HPs long enough to have a need to complain seriously. I do recall very well about 10 years ago that our company owned (quite regretfully) a stack of Compaq machines-- they were really bad.
Today, it seems that the HP and Compaq brands are both good. But, Compaq went through a patch of rough times. If lots of people are buying HP and start having problems, perhaps they will switch back to Dell.
In any case, I will continue to buy Dell, as I have nothing but good words to say about their machines. Support is another issue, but it seems to be a common problem in the industry -- even far beyond the PC industry.
If Dell is able to reduce staff and still continue to ship current volumes of machines, I think they will stablize and begin to grow again.
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by PC-Enclosure
August 10, 2008 12:22 PM PDT
- It's a shame that such a high profile manufacture has hit hard times, maybe it is time for them to look at their outsourcing policy, as this seems to have helped Apples bottom line.
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