Did Dell knowingly sell broken OptiPlex PCs and try to cover up problems with bad capacitors, as some have charged? Not so fast, says Dell, who responded to the widespread media attention in a blog post.
"Some of you may have been reading about faulty capacitors in some of our older OptiPlex desktops," Dell's Lionel Menchaca wrote. "Before I get into more details, I want to make some points clear.:
"Dell suspended use of Nichicon capacitors after we discovered a problem in its manufacturing process. As we routinely do with product issues, we actively investigated this failures, audited the Nichicon plants and worked with customers to fix OptiPlex computers on a case-by-case basis."
Menchaca also pointed out that Dell voluntarily extended warranties on all potentially affected OptiPlex motherboards up to January 2008.
Read the full blog post here.
Image: simplygeek.co.uk
Comments are closed on this article
Glycerin
July 03, 2010 at 4:57pm
Dell sucks, but not as much as Apple.
I'm suprised Dell didn't pull a Steve Jobs and tell everyone its their fault the caps broke because "You're using it wrong"
I don't buy OEM PC's because I build my own, but if I did, I'd be getting an HP, IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba, Gateway or Sony before I ever got some piece of crap Dell. Or Apple. Those two put themselves on my shitlist long ago.
MRrelabled
July 02, 2010 at 3:44pm
Well I few years back when I called Dell about a customers computer that was 1.5 years out of warranty and had bad caps the best I was offered was a $150 replacement for a proprietary piece of foxconn junk which they wouldn't say had any better caps. similar no proprietary boards at the time cost $60.
If Dell makes there bed, well then they need to lie in it, not lie about it. They own the problem when they use proprietary parts, it called price fixing !!
Blaze589
July 02, 2010 at 12:31pm
How ironic; I ordered some replacement caps this week for my Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI-Pro motherboard. One of my 16v 1000uf caps is bulged and is on the verge of failing. My system is also a little bit unstable because of it. It's a good thing the industry has switched to solid caps on motherboards (lasts longer).
armada439
July 02, 2010 at 10:22am
Haha the capacitors on the motherboard in my server are busted like that too...thing still works though, its such a beast I don't think it will ever die
Blues22475
July 02, 2010 at 8:47am
"This was not a Dell-specific issue, but an industry-wide
problem."This doesn't mean anything. To me this seems like one of those "Oh they did it so we can too" kind of deals If Dell were aware of the issue, did they take steps to prevent this issue from happening (if at all possible)?
"Dell did not knowingly ship faulty motherboards, and we worked directly
with customers in situations where the issue occurred."This does not clarify anything. This is standard business practice as far as I know. If you don't want your customers leaving you, you'd better fix the problem asap. As they say, satisfied customers will tell far fewer people about their successful system than a very angry customer who will tell everyone they can about how a company has failed them.
IMO, this is probably a "cover all" for this issue. I've dealt with Dell before and they've sent DOA parts to me, and technicians out here with DOA parts.
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Ignorance is man's greatest enemy.
Danthrax66
July 02, 2010 at 9:43am
You clearly didn't look up anything on the topic did you? Every single motherboard/pcb that was made during those years had faulty capacitors be it dell or asus or evga or gigabyte. The capacitor manufacturers were producing shit that had a high failure rate. I have had nothing but good experiences with dell services/warranty and they actually do stand behind their products. And yeah sometimes you get a doa part but if I order from newegg sometimes I get doa asus or xfx or evga parts too not every single part can be perfect and NO ONE test every single part they ship out.
big_montana
July 02, 2010 at 10:08am
But Dell had the highest failure rates of all the vendors. The other vendors resolved their cap issues quickly, while dells continued to linger past the 2008 extended warranty period. I know of what I speak, as I supported over 700 of these craptacular Optilex 280's from Dell. Every single one of them had bad caps within 2 years, every single replacement mobo also failed due to bad caps. Dell than issued a serive call to have all our mobo's replaced with their "new and improved" mobo with the new caps. Guess what happened? You got it, they failed as well. The asnwer we got from dell is that we ran our systems to long, and that is why they failed and they refused to honr the extended warranty on any of these systems. Dell makes crap, not just in their desktop line but their latitude laptops as well.
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