Dell on Thursday attempted to minimize the damage done by the release of documents related to a 2007 court case involving faulty PCs, saying it did not knowingly ship faulty motherboards to its customers.
The continuing fallout may be enough to force CEO Michael Dell to go public in defense of his company. The statement, published to the Direct2Dell blog by chief blogger Lionel Menchaca, seems to contradict what appears to be in internal Dell documents unsealed by the court. They included internal e-mails, studies done by the company themselves, and even instructions from superiors to play dumb when customers called.
Most shocking is the expected failure rate of the OptiPlex desktops that are at the heart of this dispute: 97 percent within three years.
Several Betanews readers themselves reported in our initial coverage that they had personally experienced problems with the OptiPlex line.
"This is an issue we addressed some time ago," Menchaca wrote, adding that no current line is affected by the issues. "This was an industry wide problem ... this is not a safety issue."
Menchaca said the company used the faulty capacitors from Nichicon from 2003 to 2005, but suspended use following the discovery that they were causing motherboards to fail. He said Dell worked with concerned customers on a case-by-case basis.
Furthermore, AIT was using the OptiPlex systems as servers, a use they were not designed for, Menchaca argued. He added that the company itself admitted that Dell had provided them with warranty work up until the point AIT refused to continue paying for the faulty systems.
Commenters on the post seemed nonplussed by Menchaca's response. Some pointed out that the most troubling parts of the documents released were based on the company's own data.
"You need to assure your customers that they can trust the company they are doing business with," one wrote.
A request for comment from AIT was outstanding as of press time.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
